The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
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Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: Constance Garnett
Release Date: April 2, 2005 [EBook #1399]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANNA KARENINA ***
Etext prepared by David Brannan
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Constance Garnett
Part One
Chapter 1
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in
its own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife
had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with
a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she
had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in
the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted
three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all
the members of their family and household, were painfully
conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was
no sense in their living together, and that the stray people
brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one
another than they, the members of the family and household of the
Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had
not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over
the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper,
and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation
for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at
dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given
warning.
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch
Oblonsky--Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world--
woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the
morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered
sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for
person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long
sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side
and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up
on the sofa, and opened his eyes.
"Yes, yes, how was it now?" he thought, going over his dream.
"Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at
Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but
then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner
on glass tables, and the tables sang, _Il mio tesoro_--not _Il mio
tesoro_ though, but something better, and there were some sort of
little decanters on the table, and they were women, too," he
remembered.
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a
smile. "Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal
more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words,
or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake." And noticing a
gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he
cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt
about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday,
worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he
had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his
hand, without getting up, towards the place where his
dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he
suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's room,
but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he
knitted his brows.
"Ah, ah, ah! Oo!..." he muttered, recalling everything that had
happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife
was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his
position, and worst of all, his own fault.
"Yes, she won't forgive me, and she can't forgive me. And the
most awful thing about it is that it's all my fault--all my
fault, though I'm not to blame. That's the point of the whole
situation," he reflected. "Oh, oh, oh!" he kept repeating in
despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused
him by this quarrel.
Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming,
happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his
hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room,
to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw
her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed
everything in her hand.
She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household
details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting
perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with
an expression of horror, despair, and indignation.
"What's this? this?" she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the
case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in
which he had met his wife's words.
There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people
when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful.
He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which
he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault.
Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging
forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even--anything
would have been better than what he did do--his face utterly
involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)--utterly involuntarily
assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight
of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke
out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and
rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her
husband.
"It's that idiotic smile that's to blame for it all," thought
Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" he said to himself
in despair, and found no answer.
Chapter 2
Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with
himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading
himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this
date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of
thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five
living and two dead children, and only a year younger than
himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better
in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of
his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and
himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins
better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of
them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly
thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his
wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her,
and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a
worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way
remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a
sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out
quite the other way.
"Oh, it's awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!" Stepan Arkadyevitch
kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be
done. "And how well things were going up till now! how well we
got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never
interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children
and the house just as she liked. It's true it's bad _her_ having
been a governess in our house. That's bad! There's something
common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess. But what a
governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle.
Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the
house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that
she's already...it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh,
oh! But what, what is to be done?"
There was no solution, but that universal solution which life
gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble.
That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day--that is,
forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now,
at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music
sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the
dream of daily life.
"Then we shall see," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and
getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk,
tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air
into his broad, bare chest, he walked to the window with his
usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried his full
frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang the bell
loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old
friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a
telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all the
necessaries for shaving.
"Are there any papers from the office?" asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at the
looking-glass.
"On the table," replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy
at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly
smile, "They've sent from the carriage-jobbers."
Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in
the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the
looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another.
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes asked: "Why do you tell me that?
don't you know?"
Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg,
and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his
master.
"I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you
or themselves for nothing," he said. He had obviously prepared
the sentence beforehand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract
attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it
through, guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in
telegrams, and his face brightened.
"Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow," he
said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber,
cutting a pink path through his long, curly whiskers.
"Thank God!" said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like
his master, realized the significance of this arrival--that is,
that Anna Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring
about a reconciliation between husband and wife.
"Alone, or with her husband?" inquired Matvey.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work
on his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the
looking-glass.
"Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?"
"Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders."
"Darya Alexandrovna?" Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.
"Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and
then do what she tells you."
"You want to try it on," Matvey understood, but he only said,
"Yes sir."
Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be
dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots,
came back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The
barber
had gone.
"Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away.
Let him do--that is you--do as he likes," he said, laughing only
with his eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched
his master with his head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was
silent a minute. Then a good-humored and rather pitiful smile
showed itself on his handsome face.
"Eh, Matvey?" he said, shaking his head.
"It's all right, sir; she will come round," said Matvey.
"Come round?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think so? Who's there?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,
hearing the rustle of a woman's dress at the door.
"It's I," said a firm, pleasant, woman's voice, and the stern,
pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust
in at the doorway.
"Well, what is it, Matrona?" queried Stepan Arkadyevitch, going
up to her at the door.
Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as
regards his wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost every
one in the house (even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna's chief
ally) was on his side.
"Well, what now?" he asked disconsolately.
"Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you.
She is suffering so, it's sad to hee her; and besides, everything
in the house is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the
children. Beg her forgiveness, sir. There's no help for it! One
must take the consequences..."
"But she won't see me."
"You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to
God."
"Come, that'll do, you can go," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
blushing suddenly. "Well now, do dress me." He turned to Matvey
and threw off his dressing-gown decisively.
Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse's collar,
and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious
pleasure over the well-groomed body of his master.
Chapter 3
When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on
himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his
pockets his cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its
double chain and seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling
himself clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in
spite of his unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each
leg into the dining-room, where coffee was already waiting for
him, and beside the coffee, letters and papers from the office.
He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant
who was buying a forest on his wife's property. To sell this
forest was absolutely essential; but at present, until he was
reconciled with his wife, the subject could not be discussed.
The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary interests
should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation
with his wife. And the idea that he might be led on by his
interests, that he might seek a reconciliation with his wife on
account of the sale of the forest--that idea hurt him.
When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the
office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of
business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away
the papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he
opened a still damp morning paper, and began reading it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an
extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority.
And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no
special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these
subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he
only changed them when the majority changed them--or, more
strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly
changed of themselves within him.
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his
views; these political opinions and views had come to him of
themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and
coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him,
living in a certain society--owing to the need, ordinarily
developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental
activity--to have views was just as indispensable as to have a
hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to
conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle,
it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but
from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The
liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and
certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly
short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an
institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction;
and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little
gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was
so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather
allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep
in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan
Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without
his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what
was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about
another world when life might be so very amusing in this world.
And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was
fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself
on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first
founder of his family--the monkey. And so Liberalism had become
a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as
he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in
his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was
maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an
outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all
conservative elements, and that the government ought to take
measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary,
"in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic
revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism
clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too, a
financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped
some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his
characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each
innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it
was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain
satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by
Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the
household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have
left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and
of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a
situation; but these items of information did not give him, as
usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the
paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up,
shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring
his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was
anything particularly agreeable in his mind--the joyous smile
was evoked by a good digestion.
But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to
him, and he grew thoughtful.
Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of
Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard
outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.
"I told you not to sit passengers on the roof," said the little
girl in English; "there, pick them up!"
"Everything's in confusion," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; "there
are the children running about by themselves." And going to the
door, he called them. They threw down the box, that represented
a train, and came in to their father.
The little girl, her father's favorite, ran up boldly, embraced
him, and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did
the smell of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the
little girl kissed his face, which was flushed from his stooping
posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her hands, and was
about to run away again; but her father held her back.
"How is mamma?" he asked, passing his hand over his daughter's
smooth, soft little neck. "Good morning," he said, smiling to
the boy, who had come up to greet him. He was conscious that he
loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt
it, and did not respond with a smile to his father's chilly
smile.
"Mamma? She is up," answered the girl.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. "That means that she's not slept
again all night," he thought.
"Well, is she cheerful?"
The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father
and mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that
her father must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when
he asked about it so lightly. And she blushed for her father.
He at once perceived it, and blushed too.
"I don't know," she said. "She did not say we must do our
lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to
grandmamma's."
"Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though," he
said, still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.
He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a
little box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her
favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.
"For Grisha?" said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.
"Yes, yes." And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed
her on the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.
"The carriage is ready," said Matvey; "but there's some one to
see you with a petition."
"Been here long?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Half an hour."
"How many times have I told you to tell me at once?"
"One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least," said
Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was
impossible to be angry.
"Well, show the person up at once," said Oblonsky, frowning with
vexation.
The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a
request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as
he generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end
attentively without interrupting her, and gave her detailed
advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his
large, sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent
little note to a personage who might be of use to her. Having
got rid of the staff captain's widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took
his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had forgotten
anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what
he wanted to forget--his wife.
"Ah, yes!" He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a
harassed expression. "To go, or not to go!" he said to himself;
and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could
come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their
relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her
attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old
man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing
could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his
nature.
"It must be some time, though: it can't go on like this," he
said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took
out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a
mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the
drawing room, and opened the other door into his wife's bedroom.
Chapter 4
Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now
scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with
hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and
large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness of
her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things
scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which
she was taking something. Hearing her husband's steps, she
stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give
her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she
was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was
just attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times
already in these last three days--to sort out the children's
things and her own, so as to take them to her mother's--and
again she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as
each time before, she kept saying to herself, "that things cannot
go on like this, that she must take some step" to punish him, put
him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of the
suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell
herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that
this was impossible; it was impossible because she could not get
out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him.
Besides this, she realized that if even here in her own house she
could hardly manage to look after her five children properly,
they would be still worse off where she was going with them all.
As it was, even in the course of these three days, the youngest
was unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the others had
almost gone without their dinner the day before. She was
conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating
herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and
pretending she was going.
Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the
bureau as though looking for something, and only looked round at
him when he had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she
tried to give a severe and resolute expression, betrayed
bewilderment and suffering.
"Dolly!" he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head
towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but
for all that he was radiant with freshness and health. In a
rapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed with health and
freshness. "Yes, he is happy and content!" she thought; "while
I.... And that disgusting good nature, which every one likes him
for and praises--I hate that good nature of his," she thought.
Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on the
right side of her pale, nervous face.
"What do you want?" she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.
"Dolly!" he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. "Anna is
coming today."
"Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.
"But you must, really, Dolly..."
"Go away, go away, go away!" she shrieked, not looking at him, as
though this shriek were called up by physical pain.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he
could hope that she would _come round_, as Matvey expressed it, and
could quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee;
but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of
her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a
catch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began
to shine with tears.
"My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God's sake!.... You
know...." He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.
She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.
"Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing: forgive...Remember,
cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant...."
She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say,
as it were beseeching him in some way or other to make her
believe differently.
"--instant of passion?" he said, and would have gone on, but at
that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened
again, and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.
"Go away, go out of the room!" she shrieked still more shrilly,
"and don't talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness."
She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a
chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled,
his eyes were swimming with tears.
"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now; "for mercy's sake, think of the
children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me,
make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do
anything! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to
blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!"
She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he
was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin
to speak, but could not. He waited.
"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I
remember them, and know that this means their ruin," she
said--obviously one of the phrases she had more than once
repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.
She had called him "Stiva," and he glanced at her with gratitude,
and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with
aversion.
"I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything
in the world to save them, but I don't myself know how to save
them. By taking them away from their father, or by leaving them
with a vicious father--yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after
what...has happened, can we live together? Is that possible?
Tell me, eh, is it possible?" she repeated, raising her voice,
"after my husband, the father of my children, enters into a
love affair with his own children's governess?"
"But what could I do? what could I do?" he kept saying in a
pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank
lower and lower.
"You are loathsome to me, repulsive!" she shrieked, getting more
and more heated. "Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved
me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are
hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger--yes, a complete
stranger!" With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible
to herself--_stranger_.
He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and
amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her
exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love.
"No, she hates me. She will not forgive me," he thought.
"It is awful! awful!" he said.
At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it
had fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face
suddenly softened.
She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as
though she did not know where she was, and what she was doing,
and getting up rapidly, she moved towards the door.
"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change of
her face at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me?"
"Dolly, one word more," he said, following her.
"If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children!
They may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once,
and you may live here with your mistress!"
And she went out, slamming the door.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued
tread walked out of the room. "Matvey says she will come round;
but how? I don't see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how
horrible it is! And how vulgarly she shouted," he said to
himself, remembering her shriek and the words--"scoundrel" and
"mistress." "And very likely the maids were listening! Horribly
vulgar! horrible!" Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds
alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the
room.
It was Friday, and in the dining room the German watchmaker was
winding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his joke
about this punctual, bald watchmaker, "that the German was wound
up for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches," and he
smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: "And maybe she
will come round! That's a good expression, '_come round,_'" he
thought. "I must repeat that."
"Matvey!" he shouted. "Arrange everything with Darya in the
sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna," he said to Matvey when he came
in.
"Yes, sir."
Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the
steps.
"You won't dine at home?" said Matvey, seeing him off.
"That's as it happens. But here's for the housekeeping," he
said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. "That'll be
enough."
"Enough or not enough, we must make it do," said Matvey, slamming
the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.
Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, and
knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went
back again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the
household cares which crowded upon her directly she went out from
it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, the
English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in
putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay,
and which only she could answer: "What were the children to put
on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a new
cook be sent for?"
"Ah, let me alone, let me alone!" she said, and going back to her
bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when
talking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the
rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going
over in her memory all the conversation. "He has gone! But has
he broken it off with her?" she thought. "Can it be he sees her?
Why didn't I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible.
Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers--strangers
forever!" She repeated again with special significance the word
so dreadful to her. "And how I loved him! my God, how I loved
him!.... How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't I
love him more than before? The most horrible thing is," she
began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona
Philimonovna put her head in at the door.
"Let us send for my brother," she said; "he can get a dinner
anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till
six again, like yesterday."
"Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you
send for some new milk?"
And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and
drowned her grief in them for a time.
Chapter 5
Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his
excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and
therefore was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of
his habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the
service, and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and
lucrative position of president of one of the government boards
at Moscow. This post he had received through his sister Anna's
husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, who held one of the most
important positions in the ministry to whose department the
Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin had not got his brother-
in-law this berth, then through a hundred other personages--
brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts--Stiva Oblonsky
would have received this post, or some other similar one,
together with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for
him, as his affairs, in spite of his wife's considerable
property, were in an embarrassed condition.
Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Stepan
Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those who had been and
are the powerful ones of this world. One-third of the men in the
government, the older men, had been friends of his father's, and
had known him in petticoats; another third were his intimate
chums, and the remainder were friendly acquaintances.
Consequently the distributors of earthly blessings in the shape
of places, rents, shares, and such, were all his friends, and
could not overlook one of their own set; and Oblonsky had no need
to make any special exertion to get a lucrative post. He had
only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to be
quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his
characteristic good nature he never did. It would have struck
him as absurd if he had been told that he would not get a
position with the salary he required, especially as he expected
nothing out of the way; he only wanted what the men of his own
age and standing did get, and he was no worse qualified for
performing duties of the kind than any other man.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for
his good humor, but for his bright disposition, and his
unquestionable honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure,
his sparkling eyes, black hair and eyebrows, and the white and
red of his face, there was something which produced a physical
effect of kindliness and good humor on the people who met him.
"Aha! Stiva! Oblonsky! Here he is!" was almost always said
with a smile of delight on meeting him. Even though it happened
at times that after a conversation with him it seemed that
nothing particularly delightful had happened, the next day, and
the next, every one was just as delighted at meeting him again.
After filling for three years the post of president of one of the
government boards at Moscow, Stepan Arkadyevitch had won the
respect, as well as the liking, of his fellow-officials,
subordinates, and superiors, and all who had had business with
him. The principal qualities in Stepan Arkadyevitch which had
gained him this universal respect in the service consisted, in
the first place, of his extreme indulgence for others, founded on
a consciousness of his own shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect
liberalism--not the liberalism he read of in the papers, but the
liberalism that was in his blood, in virtue of which he treated
all men perfectly equally and exactly the same, whatever their
fortune or calling might be; and thirdly--the most important
point--his complete indifference to the business in which he was
engaged, in consequence of which he was never carried away, and
never made mistakes.
On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch,
escorted by a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his
little private room, put on his uniform, and went into the
boardroom. The clerks and copyists all rose, greeting him with
good-humored deference. Stepan Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as
ever, to his place, shook hands with his colleagues, and sat
down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was
consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew better
than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between
freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the
agreeable conduct of business. A secretary, with the
good-humored deference common to every one in Stepan
Arkadyevitch's office, came up with papers, and began to speak in
the familiar and easy tone which had been introduced by Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"We have succeeded in getting the information from the government
department of Penza. Here, would you care?...."
"You've got them at last?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying his
finger on the paper. "Now, gentlemen...."
And the sitting of the board began.
"If they knew," he thought, bending his head with a significant
air as he listened to the report, "what a guilty little boy their
president was half an hour ago." And his eyes were laughing
during the reading of the report. Till two o'clock the sitting
would go on without a break, and at two o'clock there would be an
interval and luncheon.
It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom
suddenly opened and someone came in.
All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait
of the Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked
round at the door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at
once drove out the intruder, and closed the glass door after him.
When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up
and stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the
times took out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his
private room. Two of the members of the board, the old veteran
in the service, Nikitin, and the _Kammerjunker Grinevitch_, went
in with him.
"We shall have time to finish after lunch," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"To be sure we shall!" said Nikitin.
"A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be," said Grinevitch of
one of the persons taking part in the case they were examining.
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch's words, giving him
thereby to understand that it was improper to pass judgment
prematurely, and made him no reply.
"Who was that came in?" he asked the doorkeeper.
"Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly
my back was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when
the members come out, then..."
"Where is he?"
"Maybe he's gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway.
That is he," said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built,
broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off
his sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn
steps of the stone staircase. One of the members going down--a
lean official with a portfolio--stood out of his way and looked
disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger, then glanced
inquiringly at Oblonsky.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His
good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his
uniform beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming
up.
"Why, it's actually you, Levin, at last!" he said with a friendly
mocking smile, scanning Levin as he approached. "How is it you
have deigned to look me up in this den?" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, and not content with shaking hands, he kissed his
friend. "Have you been here long?"
"I have just come, and very much wanted to see you," said Levin,
looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.
"Well, let's go into my room," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who knew
his friend's sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his
arm, he drew him along, as though guiding him through dangers.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his
acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian
names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers,
merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate
chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder,
and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had,
through the medium of Oblonsky, something in common. He was the
familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of
champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone, and
when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he
used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his
subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to
diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Levin was
not a disreputable chum, but Oblonsky, with his ready tact, felt
that Levin fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with
him before his subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off
into his room.
Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did
not rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and
companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in
spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as
friends are fond of one another who have been together in early
youth. But in spite of this, each of them--as is often the way
with men who have selected careers of different kinds--though in
discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart
despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led
himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend
was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight
mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him
come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something,
but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make
out, and indeed he took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived
in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and
irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a
perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch
laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his
heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his
official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling.
But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as
every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while
Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.
"We have long been expecting you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
going into his room and letting Levin's hand go as though to show
that here all danger was over. "I am very, very glad to see
you," he went on. "Well, how are you? Eh? When did you come?"
Levin was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Oblonsky's two
companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch,
which had such long white fingers, such long yellow
filbert-shaped nails, and such huge shining studs on the
shirt-cuff, that apparently they absorbed all his attention, and
allowed him no freedom of thought. Oblonsky noticed this at
once, and smiled.
"Ah, to be sure, let me introduce you," he said. "My colleagues:
Philip Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch Grinevitch"--and
turning to Levin--"a district councilor, a modern district
councilman, a gymnast who lifts thirteen stone with one hand, a
cattle-breeder and sportsman, and my friend, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch Levin, the brother of Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev."
"Delighted," said the veteran.
"I have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,"
said Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long
nails.
Levin frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to
Oblonsky. Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an
author well known to all Russia, he could not endure it when
people treated him not as Konstantin Levin, but as the brother of
the celebrated Koznishev.
"No, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with
them all, and don't go to the meetings any more," he said,
turning to Oblonsky.
"You've been quick about it!" said Oblonsky with a smile. "But
how? why?"
"It's a long story. I will tell you some time," said Levin, but
he began telling him at once. "Well, to put it shortly, I was
convinced that nothing was really done by the district councils,
or ever could be," he began, as though some one had just insulted
him. "On one side it's a plaything; they play at being a
parliament, and I'm neither young enough nor old enough to find
amusement in playthings; and on the other side" (he stammered)
"it's a means for the coterie of the district to make money.
Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the
district council--not in the form of bribes, but in the form of
unearned salary," he said, as hotly as though someone of those
present had opposed his opinion.
"Aha! You're in a new phase again, I see--a conservative," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch. "However, we can go into that later."
"Yes, later. But I wanted to see you," said Levin, looking with
hatred at Grinevitch's hand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.
"How was it you used to say you would never wear European dress
again?" he said, scanning his new suit, obviously cut by a French
tailor. "Ah! I see: a new phase."
Levin suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without
being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that
they are ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently
ashamed of it and blushing still more, almost to the point of
tears. And it was so strange to see this sensible, manly face in
such a childish plight, that Oblonsky left off looking at him.
"Oh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to
you," said Levin.
Oblonsky seemed to ponder.
"I'll tell you what: let's go to Gurin's to lunch, and there we
can talk. I am free till three."
"No," answered Levin, after an instant's thought, "I have got to
go on somewhere else."
"All right, then, let's dine together."
"Dine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few
words to say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a
talk afterwards."
"Well, say the few words, then, at once, and we'll gossip after
dinner."
"Well, it's this," said Levin; "but it's of no importance,
though."
His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort
he was making to surmount his shyness.
"What are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to
be?" he said.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Levin was in love
with his sister-in-law, Kitty, gave a hardly perceptible smile,
and his eyes sparkled merrily.
"You said a few words, but I can't answer in a few words,
because.... Excuse me a minute..."
A secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest
consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority
to his chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to
Oblonsky with some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a
question, to explain some objection. Stepan Arkadyevitch,
without hearing him out, laid his hand genially on the
secretary's sleeve.
"No, you do as I told you," he said, softening his words with a
smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he
turned away from the papers, and said: "So do it that way, if you
please, Zahar Nikititch."
The secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with
the secretary Levin had completely recovered from his
embarrassment. He was standing with his elbows on the back of a
chair, and on his face was a look of ironical attention.
"I don't understand it, I don't understand it," he said.
"What don't you understand?" said Oblonsky, smiling as brightly
as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer
outburst from Levin.
"I don't understand what you are doing," said Levin, shrugging
his shoulders. "How can you do it seriously?"
"Why not?"
"Why, because there's nothing in it."
"You think so, but we're overwhelmed with work."
"On paper. But, there, you've a gift for it," added Levin.
"That's to say, you think there's a lack of something in me?"
"Perhaps so," said Levin. "But all the same I admire your
grandeur, and am proud that I've a friend in such a great person.
You've not answered my question, though," he went on, with a
desperate effort looking Oblonsky straight in the face.
"Oh, that's all very well. You wait a bit, and you'll come to
this yourself. It's very nice for you to have over six thousand
acres in the Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the
freshness of a girl of twelve; still you'll be one of us one day.
Yes, as to your question, there is no change, but it's a pity
you've been away so long."
"Oh, why so?" Levin queried, panic-stricken.
"Oh, nothing," responded Oblonsky. "We'll talk it over. But
what's brought you up to town?"
"Oh, we'll talk about that, too, later on," said Levin, reddening
again up to his ears.
"All right. I see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I should ask you
to come to us, you know, but my wife's not quite the thing. But
I tell you what; if you want to see them, they're sure now to be
at the Zoological Gardens from four to five. Kitty skates. You
drive along there, and I'll come and fetch you, and we'll go and
dine somewhere together."
"Capital. So good-bye till then."
"Now mind, you'll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the
country!" Stepan Arkadyevitch called out laughing.
"No, truly!"
And Levin went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway
remembering that he had forgotten to take leave of Oblonsky's
colleagues.
"That gentleman must be a man of great energy," said Grinevitch,
when Levin had gone away.
"Yes, my dear boy," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, nodding his head,
"he's a lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky
district; everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not
like some of us."
"You have a great deal to complain of, haven't you, Stepan
Arkadyevitch?"
"Ah, yes, I'm in a poor way, a bad way," said Stepan Arkadyevitch
with a heavy sigh.
Chapter 6
When Oblonsky asked Levin what had brought him to town, Levin
blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because he
could not answer, "I have come to make your sister-in-law an
offer," though that was precisely what he had come for.
The families of the Levins and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble
Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly
terms. This intimacy had grown still closer during Levin's
student days. He had both prepared for the university with the
young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Kitty and Dolly, and
had entered at the same time with him. In those days Levin used
often to be in the Shtcherbatskys' house, and he was in love with
the Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was
with the household, the family, that Konstantin Levin was in
love, especially with the feminine half of the household. Levin
did not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older
than he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys' house that he
saw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble,
cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been deprived by
the death of his father and mother. All the members of that
family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as
it were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and he
not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the
poetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the existence of the
loftiest sentiments and every possible perfection. Why it was
the three young ladies had one day to speak French, and the next
English; why it was that at certain hours they played by turns on
the piano, the sounds of which were audible in their brother's
room above, where the students used to work; why they were
visited by those professors of French literature, of music, of
drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three young
ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to the
Tversky boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Dolly in a long
one, Natalia in a half-long one, and Kitty in one so short that
her shapely legs in tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to
all beholders; why it was they had to walk about the Tversky
boulevard escorted by a footman with a gold cockade in his
hat--all this and much more that was done in their mysterious
world he did not understand, but he was sure that everything that
was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with
the mystery of the proceedings.
In his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest,
Dolly, but she was soon married to Oblonsky. Then he began being
in love with the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be
in love with one of the sisters, only he could not quite make out
which. But Natalia, too, had hardly made her appearance in the
world when she married the diplomat Lvov. Kitty was still a
child when Levin left the university. Young Shtcherbatsky went
into the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and Levin's relations
with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship with
Oblonsky, became less intimate. But when early in the winter of
this year Levin came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and
saw the Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he
was indeed destined to love.
One would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for
him, a man of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two
years old, to make the young Princess Shtcherbatskaya an offer of
marriage; in all likelihood he would at once have been looked
upon as a good match. But Levin was in love, and so it seemed to
him that Kitty was so perfect in every respect that she was a
creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature
so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that
other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.
After spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment,
seeing Kitty almost every day in society, into which he went so
as to meet her, he abruptly decided that it could not be, and
went back to the country.
Levin's conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea
that in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and
worthless match for the charming Kitty, and that Kitty herself
could not love him. In her family's eyes he had no ordinary,
definite career and position in society, while his contemporaries
by this time, when he was thirty-two, were already, one a
colonel, and another a professor, another director of a bank and
railways, or president of a board like Oblonsky. But he (he knew
very well how he must appear to others) was a country gentleman,
occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building barns;
in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out
well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the
world, is done by people fit for nothing else.
The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an
ugly person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such
an ordinary, in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude
to Kitty in the past--the attitude of a grown-up person to a
child, arising from his friendship with her brother--seemed to
him yet another obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured man, as
he considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend;
but to be loved with such a love as that with which he loved
Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and, still more, a
distinguished man.
He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men,
but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could
not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and
exceptional women.
But after spending two months alone in the country, he was
convinced that this was not one of those passions of which he had
had experience in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not
an instant's rest; that he could not live without deciding the
question, would she or would she not be his wife, and that his
despair had arisen only from his own imaginings, that he had no
sort of proof that he would be rejected. And he had now come to
Moscow with a firm determination to make an offer, and get
married if he were accepted. Or...he could not conceive what
would become of him if he were rejected.
Chapter 7
On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had put up at the
house of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his
clothes he went down to his brother's study, intending to talk to
him at once about the object of his visit, and to ask his advice;
but his brother was not alone. With him there was a well-known
professor of philosophy, who had come from Harkov expressly to
clear up a difference that had arisen between them on a very
important philosophical question. The professor was carrying on
a hot crusade against materialists. Sergey Koznishev had been
following this crusade with interest, and after reading the
professor's last article, he had written him a letter stating his
objections. He accused the professor of making too great
concessions to the materialists. And the professor had promptly
appeared to argue the matter out. The point in discussion was
the question then in vogue: Is there a line to be drawn between
psychological and physiological phenomena in man? and if so,
where?
Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly
friendliness he always had for everyone, and introducing him to
the professor, went on with the conversation.
A little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore himself
from the discussion for an instant to greet Levin, and then went
on talking without paying any further attention to him. Levin
sat down to wait till the professor should go, but he soon began
to get interested in the subject under discussion.
Levin had come across the magazine articles about which they were
disputing, and had read them, interested in them as a development
of the first principles of science, familiar to him as a natural
science student at the university. But he had never connected
these scientific deductions as to the origin of man as an animal,
as to reflex action, biology, and sociology, with those questions
as to the meaning of life and death to himself, which had of late
been more and more often in his mind.
As he listened to his brother's argument with the professor, he
noticed that they connected these scientific questions with those
spiritual problems, that at times they almost touched on the
latter; but every time they were close upon what seemed to him
the chief point, they promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged
again into a sea of subtle distinctions, reservations,
quotations, allusions, and appeals to authorities, and it was
with difficulty that he understood what they were talking about.
"I cannot admit it," said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual
clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. "I
cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of
the external world has been derived from perceptions. The most
fundamental idea, the idea of existence, has not been received by
me through sensation; indeed, there is no special sense-organ for
the transmission of such an idea."
"Yes, but they--Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov--would answer
that your consciousness of existence is derived from the
conjunction of all your sensations, that that consciousness of
existence is the result of your sensations. Wurt, indeed, says
plainly that, assuming there are no sensations, it follows that
there is no idea of existence."
"I maintain the contrary," began Sergey Ivanovitch.
But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close upon the
real point of the matter, they were again retreating, and he made
up his mind to put a question to the professor.
"According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is
dead, I can have no existence of any sort?" he queried.
The professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering
at the interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more
like a bargeman than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon
Sergey Ivanovitch, as though to ask: What's one to say to him?
But Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been talking with far less heat
and one-sidedness than the professor, and who had sufficient
breadth of mind to answer the professor, and at the same time to
comprehend the simple and natural point of view from which the
question was put, smiled and said:
"That question we have no right to answer as yet."
"We have not the requisite data," chimed in the professor, and he
went back to his argument. "No," he said; "I would point out the
fact that if, as Pripasov directly asserts, perception is based
on sensation, then we are bound to distinguish sharply between
these two conceptions."
Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to
go.
Chapter 8
When the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his
brother.
"Delighted that you've come. For some time, is it? How's your
farming getting on?"
Levin knew that his elder brother took little interest in
farming, and only put the question in deference to him, and so he
only told him about the sale of his wheat and money matters.
Levin had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get
married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to
do so. But after seeing his brother, listening to his
conversation with the professor, hearing afterwards the
unconsciously patronizing tone in which his brother questioned
him about agricultural matters (their mother's property had not
been divided, and Levin took charge of both their shares), Levin
felt that he could not for some reason begin to talk to him of
his intention of marrying. He felt that his brother would not
look at it as he would have wished him to.
"Well, how is your district council doing?" asked Sergey
Ivanovitch, who was greatly interested in these local boards and
attached great importance to them.
"I really don't know."
"What! Why, surely you're a member of the board?"
"No, I'm not a member now; I've resigned," answered Levin, "and I
no longer attend the meetings."
"What a pity!" commented Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.
Levin in self-defense began to describe what took place in the
meetings in his district.
"That's how it always is!" Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.
"We Russians are always like that. Perhaps it's our strong
point, really, the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we
overdo it, we comfort ourselves with irony which we always have
on the tip of our tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our
local self-government to any other European people--why, the
Germans or the English would have worked their way to freedom
from them, while we simply turn them into ridicule."
"But how can it be helped?" said Levin penitently. "It was my
last effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can't. I'm no
good at it."
"It's not that you're no good at it," said Sergey Ivanovitch; "it
is that you don't look at it as you should."
"Perhaps not," Levin answered dejectedly.
"Oh! do you know brother Nikolay's turned up again?"
This brother Nikolay was the elder brother of Konstantin Levin,
and half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a man utterly ruined, who
had dissipated the greater part of his fortune, was living in the
strangest and lowest company, and had quarreled with his
brothers.
"What did you say?" Levin cried with horror. "How do you know?"
"Prokofy saw him in the street."
"Here in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?" Levin got up from
his chair, as though on the point of starting off at once.
"I am sorry I told you," said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head
at his younger brother's excitement. "I sent to find out where
he is living, and sent him his IOU to Trubin, which I paid. This
is the answer he sent me."
And Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a paper-weight and
handed it to his brother.
Levin read in the queer, familiar handwriting: "I humbly beg you
to leave me in peace. That's the only favor I ask of my gracious
brothers.--Nikolay Levin."
Levin read it, and without raising his head stood with the note
in his hands opposite Sergey Ivanovitch.
There was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget
his unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it
would be base to do so.
"He obviously wants to offend me," pursued Sergey Ivanovitch;
"but he cannot offend me, and I should have wished with all my
heart to assist him, but I know it's impossible to do that."
"Yes, yes," repeated Levin. "I understand and appreciate your
attitude to him; but I shall go and see him."
"If you want to, do; but I shouldn't advise it," said Sergey
Ivanovitch. "As regards myself, I have no fear of your doing so;
he will not make you quarrel with me; but for your own sake, I
should say you would do better not to go. You can't do him any
good; still, do as you please."
"Very likely I can't do any good, but I feel--especially at such
a moment--but that's another thing--I feel I could not be at
peace."
"Well, that I don't understand," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "One
thing I do understand," he added; "it's a lesson in humility. I
have come to look very differently and more charitably on what is
called infamous since brother Nikolay has become what he is...you
know what he did..."
"Oh, it's awful, awful!" repeated Levin.
After obtaining his brother's address from Sergey Ivanovitch's
footman, Levin was on the point of setting off at once to see
him, but on second thought he decided to put off his visit till
the evening. The first thing to do to set his heart at rest was
to accomplish what he had come to Moscow for. From his brother's
Levin went to Oblonsky's office, and on getting news of the
Shtcherbatskys from him, he drove to the place where he had been
told he might find Kitty.
Chapter 9
At four o'clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Levin stepped
out of a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, and turned along
the path to the frozen mounds and the skating ground, knowing
that he would certainly find her there, as he had seen the
Shtcherbatskys' carriage at the entrance.
It was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges,
drivers, and policemen were standing in the approach. Crowds of
well-dressed people, with hats bright in the sun, swarmed about
the entrance and along the well-swept little paths between the
little houses adorned with carving in the Russian style. The old
curly birches of the gardens, all their twigs laden with snow,
looked as though freshly decked in sacred vestments.
He walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept
saying to himself--"You mustn't be excited, you must be calm.
What's the matter with you? What do you want? Be quiet,
stupid," he conjured his heart. And the more he tried to compose
himself, the more breathless he found himself. An acquaintance
met him and called him by his name, but Levin did not even
recognize him. He went towards the mounds, whence came the clank
of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up,
the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry
voices. He walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay
open before his eyes, and at once, amidst all the skaters, he
knew her.
He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized
on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite
end of the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either
in her dress or her attitude. But for Levin she was as easy to
find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made
bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round
her. "Is it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to
her?" he thought. The place where she stood seemed to him a holy
shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when he was
almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to
make an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that
people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he too might
come there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding
looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the
sun, without looking.
On that day of the week and at that time of day people of one
set, all acquainted with one another, used to meet on the ice.
There were crack skaters there, showing off their skill, and
learners clinging to chairs with timid, awkward movements, boys,
and elderly people skating with hygienic motives. They seemed to
Levin an elect band of blissful beings because they were here,
near her. All the skaters, it seemed, with perfect
self-possession, skated towards her, skated by her, even spoke to
her, and were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital
ice and the fine weather.
Nikolay Shtcherbatsky, Kitty's cousin, in a short jacket and
tight trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his skates on.
Seeing Levin, he shouted to him:
"Ah, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate
ice--do put your skates on."
"I haven't got my skates," Levin answered, marveling at this
boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing
sight of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though
the sun were coming near him. She was in a corner, and turning
out her slender feet in their high boots with obvious timidity,
she skated towards him. A boy in Russian dress, desperately
waving his arms and bowed down to the ground, overtook her. She
skated a little uncertainly; taking her hands out of the little
muff that hung on a cord, she held them ready for emergency, and
looking towards Levin, whom she had recognized, she smiled at
him, and at her own fears. When she had got round the turn, she
gave herself a push off with one foot, and skated straight up to
Shtcherbatsky. Clutching at his arm, she nodded smiling to
Levin. She was more splendid than he had imagined her.
When he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her
to himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so
freely set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of
childish brightness and good humor. The childishness of her
expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made
up her special charm, and that he fully realized. But what
always struck him in her as something unlooked for, was the
expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and above
all, her smile, which always transported Levin to an enchanted
world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he
remembered himself in some days of his early childhood.
"Have you been here long?" she said, giving him her hand. "Thank
you," she added, as he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen
out of her muff.
"I? I've not long...yesterday...I mean today...I arrived,"
answered Levin, in his emotion not at once understanding her
question. "I was meaning to come and see you," he said; and
then, recollecting with what intention he was trying to see her,
he was promptly overcome with confusion and blushed.
"I didn't know you could skate, and skate so well."
She looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make out the
cause of his confusion.
"Your praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up here that
you are the best of skaters," she said, with her little
black-gloved hand brushing a grain of hoarfrost off her muff.
"Yes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach
perfection."
"You do everything with passion, I think," she said smiling. "I
should so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and let us
skate together."
"Skate together! Can that be possible?" thought Levin, gazing at
her.
"I'll put them on directly," he said.
And he went off to get skates.
"It's a long while since we've seen you here, sir," said the
attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the
skate. "Except you, there's none of the gentlemen first-rate
skaters. Will that be all right?" said he, tightening the strap.
"Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please," answered Levin, with
difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would
overspread his face. "Yes," he thought, "this now is life, this
is happiness! _Together,_ she said; _let us skate together!_ Speak
to her now? But that's just why I'm afraid to speak--because I'm
happy now, happy in hope, anyway.... And then?.... But I must!
I must! I must! Away with weakness!"
Levin rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over
the rough ice round the hut, came out on the smooth ice and
skated without effort, as it were, by simple exercise of will,
increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He
approached with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.
She gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going
faster and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more
tightly she grasped his hand.
"With you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,"
she said to him.
"And I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me," he
said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and
blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when
all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all
its friendliness, and Levin detected the familiar change in her
expression that denoted the working of thought; a crease showed
on her smooth brow.
"Is there anything troubling you?--though I've no right to ask
such a question," he added hurriedly.
"Oh, why so?.... No, I have nothing to trouble me," she
responded coldly; and she added immediately: "You haven't seen
Mlle. Linon, have you?"
"Not yet."
"Go and speak to her, she likes you so much."
"What's wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!" thought
Levin, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray
ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her
false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.
"Yes, you see we're growing up," she said to him, glancing
towards Kitty, "and growing old. _Tiny bear_ has grown big now!"
pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his
joke about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the
three bears in the English nursery tale. "Do you remember that's
what you used to call them?"
He remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at
the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.
"Now, go and skate, go and skate. Our Kitty has learned to skate
nicely, hasn't she?"
When Levin darted up to Kitty her face was no longer stern; her
eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and friendliness, but
Levin fancied that in her friendliness there was a certain note
of deliberate composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a
little of her old governess and her peculiarities, she questioned
him about his life.
"Surely you must be dull in the country in the winter, aren't
you?" she said.
"No, I'm not dull, I am very busy," he said, feeling that she was
holding him in check by her composed tone, which he would not
have the force to break through, just as it had been at the
beginning of the winter.
"Are you going to stay in town long?" Kitty questioned him.
"I don't know," he answered, not thinking of what he was saying.
The thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet
friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding
anything came into his mind, and he resolved to make a struggle
against it.
"How is it you don't know?"
"I don't know. It depends upon you," he said, and was
immediately horror-stricken at his own words.
Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that she did not
want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out,
and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle.
Linon, said something to her, and went towards the pavilion where
the ladies took off their skates.
"My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me, guide me,"
said Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a
need of violent exercise, he skated about describing inner and
outer circles.
At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of
the day, came out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a
cigarette in his mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down the steps
in his skates, crashing and bounding up and down. He flew down,
and without even changing the position of his hands, skated away
over the ice.
"Ah, that's a new trick!" said Levin, and he promptly ran up to
the top to do this new trick.
"Don't break your neck! it needs practice!" Nikolay Shtcherbatsky
shouted after him.
Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could,
and dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement
with his hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely
touching the ice with his hand, with a violent effort recovered
himself, and skated off, laughing.
"How splendid, how nice he is!" Kitty was thinking at that time,
as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked
towards him with a smile of quiet affection, as though he were a
favorite brother. "And can it be my fault, can I have done
anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know it's not he
that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he's so jolly.
Only, why did he say that?..." she mused.
Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at
the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still
and pondered a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the
mother and daughter at the entrance of the gardens.
"Delighted to see you," said Princess Shtcherbatskaya. "On
Thursdays we are home, as always."
"Today, then?"
"We shall be pleased to see you," the princess said stiffly.
This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to
smooth over her mother's coldness. She turned her head, and with
a smile said:
"Good-bye till this evening."
At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side,
with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a
conquering hero. But as he approached his mother-in-law, he
responded in a mournful and crestfallen tone to her inquiries
about Dolly's health. After a little subdued and dejected
conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out his chest
again, and put his arm in Levin's.
"Well, shall we set off?" he asked. "I've been thinking about
you all this time, and I'm very, very glad you've come," he said,
looking him in the face with a significant air.
"Yes, come along," answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly
the sound of that voice saying, "Good-bye till this evening," and
seeing the smile with which it was said.
"To the England or the Hermitage?"
"I don't mind which."
"All right, then, the England," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than at the
Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to avoid it.
"Have you got a sledge? That's first-rate, for I sent my
carriage home."
The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what
that change in Kitty's expression had meant, and alternately
assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair,
seeing clearly that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while
he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had
been before her smile and those words, "Good-bye till this
evening."
Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing
the menu of the dinner.
"You like turbot, don't you?" he said to Levin as they were
arriving.
"Eh?" responded Levin. "Turbot? Yes, I'm _awfully_ fond of
turbot."
Chapter 10
When Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he could not
help noticing a certain peculiarity of expression, as it were, a
restrained radiance, about the face and whole figure of Stepan
Arkadyevitch. Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat
over one ear walked into the dining room, giving directions to
the Tatar waiters, who were clustered about him in evening coats,
bearing napkins. Bowing to right and left to the people he met,
and here as everywhere joyously greeting acquaintances, he went
up to the sideboard for a preliminary appetizer of fish and
vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in ribbons,
lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing that
even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Levin for
his part refrained from taking any vodka simply because he felt
such a loathing of that Frenchwoman, all made up, it seemed, of
false hair, _poudre de riz,_ and _vinaigre de toilette_. He made
haste to move away from her, as from a dirty place. His whole
soul was filled with memories of Kitty, and there was a smile of
triumph and happiness shining in his eyes.
"This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won't be
disturbed here," said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed
old Tatar with immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind.
"Walk in, your excellency," he said to Levin; by way of showing
his respect to Stepan Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest
as well.
Instantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the
bronze chandelier, though it already had a table cloth on it, he
pushed up velvet chairs, and came to a standstill before Stepan
Arkadyevitch with a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands,
awaiting his commands.
"If you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free
directly; Prince Golistin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come
in."
"Ah! oysters."
Stepan Arkadyevitch became thoughtful.
"How if we were to change our program, Levin?" he said, keeping
his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious
hesitation. "Are the oysters good? Mind now."
"They're Flensburg, your excellency. We've no Ostend."
"Flensburg will do, but are they fresh?"
"Only arrived yesterday."
"Well, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change
the whole program? Eh?"
"It's all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and
porridge better than anything; but of course there's nothing like
that here."
"_Porridge a la Russe,_ your honor would like?" said the Tatar,
bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.
"No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I've
been skating, and I'm hungry. And don't imagine," he added,
detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky's face, "that I
shan't appreciate your choice. I am fond of good things."
"I should hope so! After all, it's one of the pleasures of
life," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Well, then, my friend, you
give us two--or better say three--dozen oysters, clear soup
with vegetables..."
"Printaniere," prompted the Tatar. But Stepan Arkadyevitch
apparently did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving
the French names of the dishes.
"With vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce,
then...roast beef; and mind it's good. Yes, and capons, perhaps,
and then sweets."
The Tatar, recollecting that it was Stepan Arkadyevitch's way not
to call the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did
not repeat them after him, but could not resist rehearsing the
whole menu to himself according to the bill:--"_Soupe
printaniere, turbot, sauce Beaumarchais, poulard a l'estragon,
macedoine de fruits_...etc.," and then instantly, as though worked
by springs, laying down one bound bill of fare, he took up
another, the list of wines, and submitted it to Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"What shall we drink?"
"What you like, only not too much. Champagne," said Levin.
"What! to start with? You're right though, I dare say. Do you
like the white seal?"
"_Cachet blanc,_" prompted the Tatar.
"Very well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then
we'll see."
"Yes, sir. And what table wine?"
"You can give us Nuits. Oh, no, better the classic Chablis."
"Yes, sir. And _your_ cheese, your excellency?"
"Oh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?"
"No, it's all the same to me," said Levin, unable to suppress a
smile.
And the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes
darted in with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl
shells, and a bottle between his fingers.
Stepan Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into
his waistcoat, and settling his arms comfortably, started on the
oysters.
"Not bad," he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell
with a silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. "Not
bad," he repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Levin to
the Tatar.
Levin ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would
have pleased him better. But he was admiring Oblonsky. Even the
Tatar, uncorking the bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into
the delicate glasses, glanced at Stepan Arkadyevitch, and settled
his white cravat with a perceptible smile of satisfaction.
"You don't care much for oysters, do you?" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, emptying his wine glass, "or you're worried about
something. Eh?"
He wanted Levin to be in good spirits. But it was not that Levin
was not in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in
his soul, he felt sore and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in
the midst of private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in
all this fuss and bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking
glasses, gas, and waiters--all of it was offensive to him. He
was afraid of sullying what his soul was brimful of.
"I? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me," he said. "You
can't conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like
me, as queer as that gentleman's nails I saw at your place..."
"Yes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch's
nails," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing.
"It's too much for me," responded Levin. "Do try, now, and put
yourself in my place, take the point of view of a country person.
We in the country try to bring our hands into such a state as
will be most convenient for working with. So we cut our nails;
sometimes we turn up our sleeves. And here people purposely let
their nails grow as long as they will, and link on small saucers
by way of studs, so that they can do nothing with their hands."
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.
"Oh, yes, that's just a sign that he has no need to do coarse
work. His work is with the mind..."
"Maybe. But still it's queer to me, just as at this moment it
seems queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over
as soon as we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here are
we trying to drag out our meal as long as possible, and with that
object eating oysters..."
"Why, of course," objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But that's just
the aim of civilization--to make everything a source of
enjoyment."
"Well, if that's its aim, I'd rather be a savage."
"And so you are a savage. All you Levins are savages."
Levin sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt
ashamed and sore, and he scowled; but Oblonsky began speaking of
a subject which at once drew his attention.
"Oh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the
Shtcherbatskys', I mean?" he said, his eyes sparkling
significantly as he pushed away the empty rough shells, and drew
the cheese towards him.
"Yes, I shall certainly go," replied Levin; "though I fancied the
princess was not very warm in her invitation."
"What nonsense! That's her manner.... Come, boy, the soup!....
That's her manner--_grande dame,_" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I'm
coming, too, but I have to go to the Countess Bonina's rehearsal.
Come, isn't it true that you're a savage? How do you explain the
sudden way in which you vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys
were continually asking me about you, as though I ought to know.
The only thing I know is that you always do what no one else
does."
"Yes," said Levin, slowly and with emotion, "you're right. I am
a savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in
coming now. Now I have come..."
"Oh, what a lucky fellow you are!" broke in Stepan Arkadyevitch,
looking into Levin's eyes.
"Why?"
"I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,"
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Everything is before you."
"Why, is it over for you already?"
"No; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present
is mine, and the present--well, it's not all that it might be."
"How so?"
"Oh, things go wrong. But I don't want to talk of myself, and
besides I can't explain it all," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Well, why have you come to Moscow, then?.... Hi! take away!" he
called to the Tatar.
"You guess?" responded Levin, his eyes like deep wells of light
fixed on Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"I guess, but I can't be the first to talk about it. You can see
by that whether I guess right or wrong," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, gazing at Levin with a subtle smile.
"Well, and what have you to say to me?" said Levin in a quivering
voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering
too. "How do you look at the question?"
Stepan Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never
taking his eyes off Levin.
"I?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "there's nothing I desire so much
as that--nothing! It would be the best thing that could be."
"But you're not making a mistake? You know what we're speaking
of?" said Levin, piercing him with his eyes. "You think it's
possible?"
"I think it's possible. Why not possible?"
"No! do you really think it's possible? No, tell me all you
think! Oh, but if...if refusal's in store for me!... Indeed I
feel sure..."
"Why should you think that?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling at
his excitement.
"It seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for
her too."
"Oh, well, anyway there's nothing awful in it for a girl. Every
girl's proud of an offer."
"Yes, every girl, but not she."
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of
Levin's, that for him all the girls in the world were divided
into two classes: one class--all the girls in the world except
her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very
ordinary girls: the other class--she alone, having no weaknesses
of any sort and higher than all humanity.
"Stay, take some sauce," he said, holding back Levin's hand as it
pushed away the sauce.
Levin obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let
Stepan Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner.
"No, stop a minute, stop a minute," he said. "You must
understand that it's a question of life and death for me. I have
never spoken to any one of this. And there's no one I could
speak of it to, except you. You know we're utterly unlike each
other, different tastes and views and everything; but I know
you're fond of me and understand me, and that's why I like you
awfully. But for God's sake, be quite straightforward with me."
"I tell you what I think," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
"But I'll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman..." Stepan
Arkadyevitch sighed, remembering his position with his wife, and,
after a moment's silence, resumed--"She has a gift of foreseeing
things. She sees right through people; but that's not all; she
knows what will come to pass, especially in the way of marriages.
She foretold, for instance, that Princess Shahovskaya would marry
Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came to pass. And
she's on your side."
"How do you mean?"
"It's not only that she likes you--she says that Kitty is
certain to be your wife."
At these words Levin's face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a
smile not far from tears of emotion.
"She says that!" cried Levin. "I always said she was exquisite,
your wife. There, that's enough, enough said about it," he said,
getting up from his seat.
"All right, but do sit down."
But Levin could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread
twice up and down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids
that his tears might not fall, and only then sat down to the
table.
"You must understand," said he, "it's not love. I've been in
love, but it's not that. It's not my feeling, but a sort of
force outside me has taken possession of me. I went away, you
see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you
understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I've
struggled with myself, I see there's no living without it. And
it must be settled."
"What did you go away for?"
"Ah, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one!
The questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can't imagine
what you've done for me by what you said. I'm so happy that I've
become positively hateful; I've forgotten everything. I heard
today that my brother Nikolay...you know, he's here...I had even
forgotten him. It seems to me that he's happy too. It's a sort
of madness. But one thing's awful.... Here, you've been
married, you know the feeling...it's awful that we--old--with a
past... not of love, but of sins...are brought all at once so
near to a creature pure and innocent; it's loathsome, and that's
why one can't help feeling oneself unworthy."
"Oh, well, you've not many sins on your conscience."
"Alas! all the same," said Levin, "when with loathing I go over
my life, I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it.... Yes."
"What would you have? The world's made so," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
"The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked:
'Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to
Thy lovingkindness.' That's the only way she can forgive me."
Chapter 11
Levin emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.
"There's one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know
Vronsky?" Stepan Arkadyevitch asked Levin.
"No, I don't. Why do you ask?"
"Give us another bottle," Stepan Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar,
who was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just
when he was not wanted.
"Why you ought to know Vronsky is that he's one of your rivals."
"Who's Vronsky?" said Levin, and his face was suddenly
transformed from the look of childlike ecstasy which Oblonsky had
just been admiring to an angry and unpleasant expression.
"Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky,
and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of
Petersburg. I made his acquaintance in Tver when I was there on
official business, and he came there for the levy of recruits.
Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections, an aide-de-camp, and
with all that a very nice, good-natured fellow. But he's more
than simply a good-natured fellow, as I've found out here--he's
a cultivated man, too, and very intelligent; he's a man who'll
make his mark."
Levin scowled and was dumb.
"Well, he turned up here soon after you'd gone, and as I can see,
he's over head and ears in love with Kitty, and you know that her
mother..."
"Excuse me, but I know nothing," said Levin, frowning gloomily.
And immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how
hateful he was to have been able to forget him.
"You wait a bit, wait a bit," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling
and touching his hand. "I've told you what I know, and I repeat
that in this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can
conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor."
Levin dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.
"But I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be,"
pursued Oblonsky, filling up his glass.
"No, thanks, I can't drink any more," said Levin, pushing away
his glass. "I shall be drunk.... Come, tell me how are you
getting on?" he went on, obviously anxious to change the
conversation.
"One word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question
soon. Tonight I don't advise you to speak," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. "Go round tomorrow morning, make an offer in due
form, and God bless you..."
"Oh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come
next spring, do," said Levin.
Now his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this
conversation with Stepan Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was
profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of
the suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Levin's
soul.
"I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the
pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me,
very bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly now," he
pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass;
"give me your advice."
"Why, what is it?"
"I'll tell you. Suppose you're married, you love your wife, but
you're fascinated by another woman..."
"Excuse me, but I'm absolutely unable to comprehend how...just as
I can't comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight
to a baker's shop and steal a roll."
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes sparkled more than usual.
"Why not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can't resist
it."
"Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwungen
Meine irdische Begier;
Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen
Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"
As he said this, Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Levin, too,
could not help smiling.
"Yes, but joking apart," resumed Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you must
understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature,
poor and lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the
thing's done, don't you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even
supposing one parts from her, so as not to break up one's family
life, still, can one help feeling for her, setting her on her
feet, softening her lot?"
"Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are
divided into two classes...at least no...truer to say: there are
women and there are...I've never seen exquisite fallen beings,
and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted
Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my
mind, and all fallen women are the same."
"But the Magdalen?"
"Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He
had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those
words are the only ones remembered. However, I'm not saying so
much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen
women. You're afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most
likely you've not made a study of spiders and don't know their
character; and so it is with me."
"It's very well for you to talk like that; it's very much like
that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult
questions over his right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no
answer. What's to be done--you tell me that, what's to be done?
Your wife gets older, while you're full of life. Before you've
time to look round, you feel that you can't love your wife with
love, however much you may esteem her. And then all at once love
turns up, and you're done for, done for," Stepan Arkadyevitch
said with weary despair.
Levin half smiled.
"Yes, you're done for," resumed Oblonsky. "But what's to be
done?"
"Don't steal rolls."
Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed outright.
"Oh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one
insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which
you can't give her; and the other sacrifices everything for you
and asks for nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act?
There's a fearful tragedy in it."
"If you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I'll
tell you that I don't believe there was any tragedy about it.
And this is why. To my mind, love...both the sorts of love,
which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, served as the
test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only
the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no
need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of
tragedy. 'I'm much obliged for the gratification, my humble
respects'--that's all the tragedy. And in platonic love there
can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure,
because..."
At that instant Levin recollected his own sins and the inner
conflict he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:
"But perhaps you are right. Very likely...I don't know, I don't
know."
"It's this, don't you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you're
very much all of a piece. That's your strong point and your
failing. You have a character that's all of a piece, and you
want the whole of life to be of a piece too--but that's not how
it is. You despise public official work because you want the
reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the
aim--and that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too,
always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to
be undivided--and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the
charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."
Levin sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own
affairs, and did not hear Oblonsky.
And suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends,
though they had been dining and drinking together, which should
have drawn them closer, yet each was thinking only of his own
affairs, and they had nothing to do with one another. Oblonsky
had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness,
instead of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to
do in such cases.
"Bill!" he called, and he went into the next room where he
promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and
dropped into conversation with him about an actress and her
protector. And at once in the conversation with the aide-de-camp
Oblonsky had a sense of relaxation and relief after the
conversation with Levin, which always put him to too great a
mental and spiritual strain.
When the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and
odd kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Levin, who would another
time have been horrified, like any one from the country, at his
share of fourteen roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off
homewards to dress and go to the Shtcherbatskys' there to decide
his fate.
Chapter 12
The young Princess Kitty Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It was
the first winter that she had been out in the world. Her success
in society had been greater than that of either of her elder
sisters, and greater even than her mother had anticipated. To
say nothing of the young men who danced at the Moscow balls being
almost all in love with Kitty, two serious suitors had already
this first winter made their appearance: Levin, and immediately
after his departure, Count Vronsky.
Levin's appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent
visits, and evident love for Kitty, had led to the first serious
conversations between Kitty's parents as to her future, and to
disputes between them. The prince was on Levin's side; he said
he wished for nothing better for Kitty. The princess for her
part, going round the question in the manner peculiar to women,
maintained that Kitty was too young, that Levin had done nothing
to prove that he had serious intentions, that Kitty felt no great
attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state
the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match
for her daughter, and that Levin was not to her liking, and she
did not understand him. When Levin had abruptly departed, the
princess was delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly:
"You see I was right." When Vronsky appeared on the scene, she
was still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Kitty was
to make not simply a good, but a brilliant match.
In the mother's eyes there could be no comparison between Vronsky
and Levin. She disliked in Levin his strange and uncompromising
opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on
his pride and his queer sort of life, as she considered it,
absorbed in cattle and peasants. She did not very much like it
that he, who was in love with her daughter, had kept coming to
the house for six weeks, as though he were waiting for something,
inspecting, as though he were afraid he might be doing them too
great an honor by making an offer, and did not realize that a
man, who continually visits at a house where there is a young
unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear. And
suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. "It's as well he's
not attractive enough for Kitty to have fallen in love with him,"
thought the mother.
Vronsky satisfied all the mother's desires. Very wealthy,
clever, of aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant
career in the army and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing
better could be wished for.
Vronsky openly flirted with Kitty at balls, danced with her, and
came continually to the house, consequently there could be no
doubt of the seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of
that, the mother had spent the whole of that winter in a state of
terrible anxiety and agitation.
Princess Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years
ago, her aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about whom
everything was well known before hand, had come, looked at his
future bride, and been looked at. The match-making aunt had
ascertained and communicated their mutual impression. That
impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day fixed
beforehand, the expected offer was made to her parents, and
accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed,
at least, to the princess. But over her own daughters she had
felt how far from simple and easy is the business, apparently so
commonplace, of marrying off one's daughters. The panics that
had been lived through, the thoughts that had been brooded over,
the money that had been wasted, and the disputes with her husband
over marrying the two elder girls, Darya and Natalia! Now, since
the youngest had come out, she was going through the same
terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with
her husband than she had over the elder girls. The old prince,
like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score
of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was
irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty,
who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the
princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had grown
accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now she
felt that there was more ground for the prince's touchiness. She
saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of
society, that a mother's duties had become still more difficult.
She saw that girls of Kitty's age formed some sort of clubs, went
to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men's society; drove
about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what
was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced
that to choose their husbands was their own affair, and not their
parents'. "Marriages aren't made nowadays as they used to be,"
was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their
elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not
learn from any one. The French fashion--of the parents
arranging their children's future--was not accepted; it was
condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of
girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society.
The Russian fashion of match-making by the offices of
intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it
was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself. But how
girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no
one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss
the matter said the same thing: "Mercy on us, it's high time in
our day to cast off all that old-fashioned business. It's the
young people have to marry; and not their parents; and so we
ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose." It
was very easy for anyone to say that who had no daughters, but
the princess realized that in the process of getting to know each
other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with
someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to
be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the
princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their
lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she
would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the
most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be
loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty
than she had been over her elder sisters.
Now she was afraid that Vronsky might confine himself to simply
flirting with her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in
love with him, but tried to comfort herself with the thought that
he was an honorable man, and would not do this. But at the same
time she knew how easy it is, with the freedom of manners of
today, to turn a girl's head, and how lightly men generally
regard such a crime. The week before, Kitty had told her mother
of a conversation she had with Vronsky during a mazurka. This
conversation had partly reassured the princess; but perfectly at
ease she could not be. Vronsky had told Kitty that both he and
his brother were so used to obeying their mother that they never
made up their minds to any important undertaking without
consulting her. "And just now, I am impatiently awaiting my
mother's arrival from Petersburg, as peculiarly fortunate," he
told her.
Kitty had repeated this without attaching any significance to the
words. But her mother saw them in a different light. She knew
that the old lady was expected from day to day, that she would be
pleased at her son's choice, and she felt it strange that he
should not make his offer through fear of vexing his mother.
However, she was so anxious for the marriage itself, and still
more for relief from her fears, that she believed it was so.
Bitter as it was for the princess to see the unhappiness of her
eldest daughter, Dolly, on the point of leaving her husband, her
anxiety over the decision of her youngest daughter's fate
engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Levin's reappearance, a
fresh source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter,
who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might,
from extreme sense of honor, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin's
arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near
being concluded.
"Why, has he been here long?" the princess asked about Levin, as
they returned home.
"He came today, mamma."
"There's one thing I want to say..." began the princess, and from
her serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be.
"Mamma," she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her,
"please, please don't say anything about that. I know, I know
all about it."
She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her
mother's wishes wounded her.
"I only want to say that to raise hopes..."
"Mamma, darling, for goodness' sake, don't talk about it. It's
so horrible to talk about it."
"I won't," said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter's
eyes; "but one thing, my love; you promised me you would have no
secrets from me. You won't?"
"Never, mamma, none," answered Kitty, flushing a little, and
looking her mother straight in the face, "but there's no use in
my telling you anything, and I...I...if I wanted to, I don't know
what to say or how...I don't know..."
"No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes," thought the
mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess
smiled that what was taking place just now in her soul seemed to
the poor child so immense and so important.
Chapter 13
After dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was
feeling a sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a
battle. Her heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not
rest on anything.
She felt that this evening, when they would both meet for the
first time, would be a turning point in her life. And she was
continually picturing them to herself, at one moment each
separately, and then both together. When she mused on the past,
she dwelt with pleasure, with tenderness, on the memories of her
relations with Levin. The memories of childhood and of Levin's
friendship with her dead brother gave a special poetic charm to
her relations with him. His love for her, of which she felt
certain, was flattering and delightful to her; and it was
pleasant for her to think of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky
there always entered a certain element of awkwardness, though he
was in the highest degree well-bred and at ease, as though there
were some false note--not in Vronsky, he was very simple and
nice, but in herself, while with Levin she felt perfectly simple
and clear. But, on the other hand, directly she thought of the
future with Vronsky, there arose before her a perspective of
brilliant happiness; with Levin the future seemed misty.
When she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the
looking-glass, she noticed with joy that it was one of her good
days, and that she was in complete possession of all her
forces,--she needed this so for what lay before her: she was
conscious of external composure and free grace in her movements.
At half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing
room, when the footman announced, "Konstantin Dmitrievitch
Levin." The princess was still in her room, and the prince had
not come in. "So it is to be," thought Kitty, and all the blood
seemed to rush to her heart. She was horrified at her paleness,
as she glanced into the looking-glass. At that moment she knew
beyond doubt that he had come early on purpose to find her alone
and to make her an offer. And only then for the first time the
whole thing presented itself in a new, different aspect; only
then she realized that the question did not affect her only--
with whom she would be happy, and whom she loved--but that she
would have that moment to wound a man whom she liked. And to
wound him cruelly. What for? Because he, dear fellow, loved
her, was in love with her. But there was no help for it, so it
must be, so it would have to be.
"My God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?" she
thought. "Can I tell him I don't love him? That will be a lie.
What am I to say to him? That I love someone else? No, that's
impossible. I'm going away, I'm going away."
She had reached the door, when she heard his step. "No! it's not
honest. What have I to be afraid of? I have done nothing wrong.
What is to be, will be! I'll tell the truth. And with him one
can't be ill at ease. Here he is," she said to herself, seeing
his powerful, shy figure, with his shining eyes fixed on her.
She looked straight into his face, as though imploring him to
spare her, and gave her hand.
"It's not time yet; I think I'm too early," he said glancing
round the empty drawing room. When he saw that his expectations
were realized, that there was nothing to prevent him from
speaking, his face became gloomy.
"Oh, no," said Kitty, and sat down at the table.
"But this was just what I wanted, to find you alone," he began,
not sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose
courage.
"Mamma will be down directly. She was very much tired....
Yesterday..."
She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not
taking her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.
He glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.
"I told you I did not know whether I should be here long...that
it depended on you..."
She dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what
answer she should make to what was coming.
"That it depended on you," he repeated. "I meant to say...I
meant to say...I came for this...to be my wife!" he brought out,
not knowing what he was saying; but feeling that the most
terrible thing was said, he stopped short and looked at her...
She was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling
ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never
anticipated that the utterance of love would produce such a
powerful effect on her. But it lasted only an instant. She
remembered Vronsky. She lifted her clear, truthful eyes, and
seeing his desperate face, she answered hastily:
"That cannot be...forgive me."
A moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what
importance in his life! And how aloof and remote from him she
had become now!
"It was bound to be so," he said, not looking at her.
He bowed, and was meaning to retreat.
Chapter 14
But at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look
of horror on her face when she saw them alone, and their
disturbed faces. Levin bowed to her, and said nothing. Kitty
did not speak nor lift her eyes. "Thank God, she has refused
him," thought the mother, and her face lighted up with the
habitual smile with which she greeted her guests on Thursdays.
She sat down and began questioning Levin about his life in the
country. He sat down again, waiting for other visitors to
arrive, in order to retreat unnoticed.
Five minutes later there came in a friend of Kitty's, married the
preceding winter, Countess Nordston.
She was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant
black eyes. She was fond of Kitty, and her affection for her
showed itself, as the affection of married women for girls always
does, in the desire to make a match for Kitty after her own ideal
of married happiness; she wanted her to marry Vronsky. Levin she
had often met at the Shtcherbatskys' early in the winter, and she
had always disliked him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit,
when they met, consisted in making fun of him.
"I do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his
grandeur, or breaks off his learned conversation with me because
I'm a fool, or is condescending to me. I like that so; to see
him condescending! I am so glad he can't bear me," she used to
say of him.
She was right, for Levin actually could not bear her, and
despised her for what she was proud of and regarded as a fine
characteristic--her nervousness, her delicate contempt and
indifference for everything coarse and earthly.
The Countess Nordston and Levin got into that relation with one
another not seldom seen in society, when two persons, who remain
externally on friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree
that they cannot even take each other seriously, and cannot even
be offended by each other.
The Countess Nordston pounced upon Levin at once.
"Ah, Konstantin Dmitrievitch! So you've come back to our corrupt
Babylon," she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand, and
recalling what he had chanced to say early in the winter, that
Moscow was a Babylon. "Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you
degenerated?" she added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.
"It's very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my
words so well," responded Levin, who had succeeded in recovering
his composure, and at once from habit dropped into his tone of
joking hostility to the Countess Nordston. "They must certainly
make a great impression on you."
"Oh, I should think so! I always note them all down. Well,
Kitty, have you been skating again?..."
And she began talking to Kitty. Awkward as it was for Levin to
withdraw now, it would still have been easier for him to
perpetrate this awkwardness than to remain all the evening and
see Kitty, who glanced at him now and then and avoided his eyes.
He was on the point of getting up, when the princess, noticing
that he was silent, addressed him.
"Shall you be long in Moscow? You're busy with the district
council, though, aren't you, and can't be away for long?"
"No, princess, I'm no longer a member of the council," he said.
"I have come up for a few days."
"There's something the matter with him," thought Countess
Nordston, glancing at his stern, serious face. "He isn't in his
old argumentative mood. But I'll draw him out. I do love making
a fool of him before Kitty, and I'll do it."
"Konstantin Dmitrievitch," she said to him, "do explain to me,
please, what's the meaning of it. You know all about such
things. At home in our village of Kaluga all the peasants and
all the women have drunk up all they possessed, and now they
can't pay us any rent. What's the meaning of that? You always
praise the peasants so."
At that instant another lady came into the room, and Levin got
up.
"Excuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about it, and
can't tell you anything," he said, and looked round at the
officer who came in behind the lady.
"That must be Vronsky," thought Levin, and, to be sure of it,
glanced at Kitty. She had already had time to look at Vronsky,
and looked round at Levin. And simply from the look in her eyes,
that grew unconsciously brighter, Levin knew that she loved that
man, knew it as surely as if she had told him so in words. But
what sort of a man was he? Now, whether for good or for ill,
Levin could not choose but remain; he must find out what the man
was like whom she loved.
There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in
what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good
in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the
other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the
qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a
throbbing ache at heart only what is good. Levin belonged to the
second class. But he had no difficulty in finding what was good
and attractive in Vronsky. It was apparent at the first glance.
Vronsky was a squarely built, dark man, not very tall, with a
good-humored, handsome, and exceedingly calm and resolute face.
Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped
black hair and freshly shaven chin down to his loosely fitting,
brand-new uniform, was simple and at the same time elegant.
Making way for the lady who had come in, Vronsky went up to the
princess and then to Kitty.
As he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a specially
tender light, and with a faint, happy, and modestly triumphant
smile (so it seemed to Levin), bowing carefully and respectfully
over her, he held out his small broad hand to her.
Greeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat down without
once glancing at Levin, who had never taken his eyes off him.
"Let me introduce you," said the princess, indicating Levin.
"Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, Count Alexey Kirillovitch
Vronsky."
Vronsky got up and, looking cordially at Levin, shook hands with
him.
"I believe I was to have dined with you this winter," he said,
smiling his simple and open smile; "but you had unexpectedly left
for the country."
"Konstantin Dmitrievitch despises and hates town and us
townspeople," said Countess Nordston.
"My words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember
them so well," said Levin, and, suddenly conscious that he had
said just the same thing before, he reddened.
Vronsky looked at Levin and Countess Nordston, and smiled.
"Are you always in the country?" he inquired. "I should think it
must be dull in the winter."
"It's not dull if one has work to do; besides, one's not dull by
oneself," Levin replied abruptly.
"I am fond of the country," said Vronsky, noticing, and affecting
not to notice, Levin's tone.
"But I hope, count, you would not consent to live in the country
always," said Countess Nordston.
"I don't know; I have never tried for long. I experienced a queer
feeling once," he went on. "I never longed so for the country,
Russian country, with bast shoes and peasants, as when I was
spending a winter with my mother in Nice. Nice itself is dull
enough, you know. And indeed, Naples and Sorrento are only
pleasant for a short time. And it's just there that Russia comes
back to me most vividly, and especially the country. It's as
though..."
He talked on, addressing both Kitty and Levin, turning his
serene, friendly eyes from one to the other, and saying obviously
just what came into his head.
Noticing that Countess Nordston wanted to say something, he
stopped short without finishing what he had begun, and listened
attentively to her.
The conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the
princess, who always kept in reserve, in case a subject should be
lacking, two heavy guns--the relative advantages of classical
and of modern education, and universal military service--had not
to move out either of them, while Countess Nordston had not a
chance of chaffing Levin.
Levin wanted to, and could not, take part in the general
conversation; saying to himself every instant, "Now go," he still
did not go, as though waiting for something.
The conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and
Countess Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began to
describe the marvels she had seen.
"Ah, countess, you really must take me, for pity's sake do take
me to see them! I have never seen anything extraordinary, though
I am always on the lookout for it everywhere," said Vronsky,
smiling.
"Very well, next Saturday," answered Countess Nordston. "But
you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch, do you believe in it?" she asked
Levin.
"Why do you ask me? You know what I shall say."
"But I want to hear your opinion."
"My opinion," answered Levin, "is only that this table-turning
simply proves that educated society--so called--is no higher
than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in
witchcraft and omens, while we..."
"Oh, then you don't believe in it?"
"I can't believe in it, countess."
"But if I've seen it myself?"
"The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins."
"Then you think I tell a lie?"
And she laughed a mirthless laugh.
"Oh, no, Masha, Konstantin Dmitrievitch said he could not believe
in it," said Kitty, blushing for Levin, and Levin saw this, and,
still more exasperated, would have answered, but Vronsky with his
bright frank smile rushed to the support of the conversation,
which was threatening to become disagreeable.
"You do not admit the conceivability at all?" he queried. "But
why not? We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know
nothing. Why should there not be some new force, still unknown
to us, which..."
"When electricity was discovered," Levin interrupted hurriedly,
"it was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was
unknown from what it proceeded and what were its effects, and
ages passed before its applications were conceived. But the
spiritualists have begun with tables writing for them, and
spirits appearing to them, and have only later started saying
that it is an unknown force."
Vronsky listened attentively to Levin, as he always did listen,
obviously interested in his words.
"Yes, but the spiritualists say we don't know at present what
this force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions
in which it acts. Let the scientific men find out what the force
consists in. No, I don't see why there should not be a new
force, if it..."
"Why, because with electricity," Levin interrupted again, "every
time you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is
manifested, but in this case it does not happen every time, and
so it follows it is not a natural phenomenon."
Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too
serious for a drawing room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way
of trying to change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and
turned to the ladies.
"Do let us try at once, countess," he said; but Levin would
finish saying what he thought.
"I think," he went on, "that this attempt of the spiritualists to
explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most
futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to
subject it to material experiment."
Every one was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.
"And I think you would be a first-rate medium," said Countess
Nordston; "there's something enthusiastic in you."
Levin opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and
said nothing.
"Do let us try table-turning at once, please," said Vronsky.
"Princess, will you allow it?"
And Vronsky stood up, looking for a little table.
Kitty got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met
Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because
she was pitying him for suffering of which she was herself the
cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am
so happy."
"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and
he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as
they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on
the point of retiring, the old prince came in, and after greeting
the ladies, addressed Levin.
"Ah!" he began joyously. "Been here long, my boy? I didn't even
know you were in town. Very glad to see you." The old prince
embraced Levin, and talking to him did not observe Vronsky, who
had risen, and was serenely waiting till the prince should turn
to him.
Kitty felt how distasteful her father's warmth was to Levin after
what had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded
at last to Vronsky's bow, and how Vronsky looked with amiable
perplexity at her father, as though trying and failing to
understand how and why anyone could be hostilely disposed towards
him, and she flushed.
"Prince, let us have Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said Countess
Nordston; "we want to try an experiment."
"What experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me,
ladies and gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the
ring game," said the old prince, looking at Vronsky, and guessing
that it had been his suggestion. "There's some sense in that,
anyway."
Vronsky looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes,
and, with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Countess
Nordston of the great ball that was to come off next week.
"I hope you will be there?" he said to Kitty. As soon as the old
prince turned away from him, Levin went out unnoticed, and the
last impression he carried away with him of that evening was the
smiling, happy face of Kitty answering Vronsky's inquiry about
the ball.
Chapter 15
At the end of the evening Kitty told her mother of her
conversation with Levin, and in spite of all the pity she felt
for Levin, she was glad at the thought that she had received an
_offer_. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after
she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep. One
impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin's face, with
his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark
dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father, and
glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him
that tears came into her eyes. But immediately she thought of
the man for whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his
manly, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the
good nature conspicuous in everything towards everyone. She
remembered the love for her of the man she loved, and once more
all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on the pillow, smiling
with happiness. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry; but what could I do?
It's not my fault," she said to herself; but an inner voice told
her something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won
Levin's love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But
her happiness was poisoned by doubts. "Lord, have pity on us;
Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us!" she repeated to
herself, till she fell asleep.
Meanwhile there took place below, in the prince's little library,
one of the scenes so often repeated between the parents on
account of their favorite daughter.
"What? I'll tell you what!" shouted the prince, waving his arms,
and at once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him
again. "That you've no pride, no dignity; that you're
disgracing, ruining your daughter by this vulgar, stupid
match-making!"
"But, really, for mercy's sake, prince, what have I done?" said
the princess, almost crying.
She, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter,
had gone to the prince to say good-night as usual, and though
she had no intention of telling him of Levin's offer and Kitty's
refusal, still she hinted to her husband that she fancied things
were practically settled with Vronsky, and that he would declare
himself so soon as his mother arrived. And thereupon, at those
words, the prince had all at once flown into a passion, and began
to use unseemly language.
"What have you done? I'll tell you what. First of all, you're
trying to catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be
talking of it, and with good reason. If you have evening
parties, invite everyone, don't pick out the possible suitors.
Invite all the young bucks. Engage a piano player, and let them
dance, and not as you do things nowadays, hunting up good
matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you've gone on
till you've turned the poor wench's head. Levin's a thousand
times the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell,
they're turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all
precious rubbish. But if he were a prince of the blood, my
daughter need not run after anyone."
"But what have I done?"
"Why, you've..." The prince was crying wrathfully.
"I know if one were to listen to you," interrupted the princess,
"we should never marry our daughter. If it's to be so, we'd
better go into the country."
"Well, and we had better."
"But do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don't try to
catch them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has
fallen in love with her, and she, I fancy..."
"Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he's
no more thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should
live to see it! Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!"
And the prince, imagining that he was mimicking his wife, made a
mincing curtsey at each word. "And this is how we're preparing
wretchedness for Kitty; and she's really got the notion into her
head..."
"But what makes you suppose so?"
"I don't suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though
women-folk haven't. I see a man who has serious intentions,
that's Levin: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who's
only amusing himself."
"Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!..."
"Well, you'll remember my words, but too late, just as with
Dolly."
"Well, well, we won't talk of it," the princess stopped him,
recollecting her unlucky Dolly.
"By all means, and good night!"
And signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife
parted with a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own
opinion.
The princess had at first been quite certain that that evening
had settled Kitty's future, and that there could be no doubt of
Vronsky's intentions, but her husband's words had disturbed her.
And returning to her own room, in terror before the unknown
future, she, too, like Kitty, repeated several times in her
heart, "Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity."
Chapter 16
Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother had been in
her youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her
married life, and still more afterwards, many love affairs
notorious in the whole fashionable world. His father he scarcely
remembered, and he had been educated in the Corps of Pages.
Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at
once got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men.
Although he did go more or less into Petersburg society, his love
affairs had always hitherto been outside it.
In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and
coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet
and innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never
even entered his head that there could be any harm in his
relations with Kitty. At balls he danced principally with her.
He was a constant visitor at their house. He talked to her as
people commonly do talk in society--all sorts of nonsense, but
nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning
in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he could not
have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming more
and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the
better he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He
did not know that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a
definite character, that it is courting young girls with no
intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil
actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It
seemed to him that he was the first who had discovered this
pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening,
if he could have put himself at the point ov view of the family
and have heard that Kitty would be unhappy if he did not marry
her, he would have been greatly astonished, and would not have
believed it. He could not believe that what gave such great and
delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong.
Still less could he have believed that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He
not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a
husband was, in accordance with the views general in the bachelor
world in which he lived, conceived as something alien, repellant,
and, above all, ridiculous.
But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what the parents
were saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys' that
the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Kitty had
grown so much stronger that evening that some step must be taken.
But what step could and ought to be taken he could not imagine.
"What is so exquisite," he thought, as he returned from the
Shtcherbatskys', carrying away with him, as he always did, a
delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from
the fact that he had not been smoking for a whole evening, and
with it a new feeling of tenderness at her love for him--"what
is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her,
but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of
looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she
told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most of all,
how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have
a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those
sweet, loving eyes! When she said: Indeed I do...'
"Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It's good for me, and good for
her." And he began wondering where to finish the evening.
He passed in review of the places he might go to. "Club? a game
of bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I'm not going. _Chateau
des Fleurs_; there I shall find Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No,
I'm sick of it. That's why I like the Shtcherbatskys', that I'm
growing better. I'll go home." He went straight to his room at
Dussot's Hotel, ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon
as his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.
Chapter 17
Next day at eleven o'clock in the morning Vronsky drove to the
station of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the
first person he came across on the great flight of steps was
Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister by the same train.
"Ah! your excellency!" cried Oblonsky, "whom are you meeting?"
"My mother," Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone did who met
Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended
the steps. "She is to be here from Petersburg today."
"I was looking out for you till two o'clock last night. Where
did you go after the Shtcherbatskys'?"
"Home," answered Vronsky. "I must own I felt so well content
yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys' that I didn't care to go
anywhere."
"I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,"
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to
Levin.
Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not
deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.
"And whom are you meeting?" he asked.
"I? I've come to meet a pretty woman," said Oblonsky.
"You don't say so!"
"_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_ My sister Anna."
"Ah! that's Madame Karenina," said Vronsky.
"You know her, no doubt?"
"I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure," Vronsky
answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff
and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.
"But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you
surely must know. All the world knows him."
"I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he's clever,
learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that's not..._not
in my line,_" said Vronsky in English.
"Yes, he's a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a
splendid man," observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, "a splendid man."
"Oh, well, so much the better for him," said Vronsky smiling.
"Oh, you've come," he said, addressing a tall old footman of his
mother's, standing at the door; "come here."
Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for everyone, Vronsky
had felt of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his
imagination he was associated with Kitty.
"Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the
_diva?_" he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.
"Of course. I'm collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the
acquaintance of my friend Levin?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Yes; but he left rather early."
"He's a capital fellow," pursued Oblonsky. "Isn't he?"
"I don't know why it is," responded Vronsky, "in all Moscow
people--present company of course excepted," he put in
jestingly, "there's something uncompromising. They are all on
the defensive, lose their tempers, as though they all want to
make one feel something..."
"Yes, that's true, it is so," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing
good-humoredly.
"Will the train soon be in?" Vronsky asked a railway official.
"The train's signaled," answered the man.
The approach of the train was more and more evident by the
preparatory bustle in the station, the rush of porters, the
movement of policemen and attendants, and people meeting the
train. Through the frosty vapor could be seen workmen in short
sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing the rails of the curving
line. The hiss of the boiler could be heard on the distant
rails, and the rumble of something heavy.
"No," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who felt a great inclination to
tell Vronsky of Levin's intentions in regard to Kitty. "No,
you've not got a true impression of Levin. He's a very nervous
man, and is sometimes out of humor, it's true, but then he is
often very nice. He's such a true, honest nature, and a heart of
gold. But yesterday there were special reasons," pursued Stepan
Arkadyevitch, with a meaning smile, totally oblivious of the
genuine sympathy he had felt the day before for his friend, and
feeling the same sympathy now, only for Vronsky. "Yes, there
were reasons why he could not help being either particularly
happy or particularly unhappy."
Vronsky stood still and asked directly: "How so? Do you mean he
made your _belle-soeur_ an offer yesterday?"
"Maybe," said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I fancied something of the
sort yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humor
too, it must mean it.... He's been so long in love, and I'm very
sorry for him."
"So that's it! I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a
better match," said Vronsky, drawing himself up and walking about
again, "though I don't know him, of course," he added. "Yes,
that is a hateful position! That's why most fellows prefer to
have to do with Klaras. If you don't succeed with them it only
proves that you've not enough cash, but in this case one's
dignity's at stake. But here's the train."
The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants
later the platform was quivering, and with puffs of steam hanging
low in the air from the frost, the engine rolled up, with the
lever of the middle wheel rhythmically moving up and down, and
the stooping figure of the engine-driver covered with frost.
Behind the tender, setting the platform more and more slowly
swaying, came the luggage van with a dog whining in it. At last
the passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating before coming to a
standstill.
A smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after him one by
one the impatient passengers began to get down: an officer of
the guards, holding himself erect, and looking severely about
him; a nimble little merchant with a satchel, smiling gaily; a
peasant with a sack over his shoulder.
Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the carriages and the
passengers, totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just
heard about Kitty excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he
arched his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a
conqueror.
"Countess Vronskaya is in that compartment," said the smart
guard, going up to Vronsky.
The guard's words roused him, and forced him to think of his
mother and his approaching meeting with her. He did not in his
heart respect his mother, and without acknowledging it to
himself, he did not love her, though in accordance with the
ideas of the set in which he lived, and with his own education,
he could not have conceived of any behavior to his mother not in
the highest degree respectful and obedient, and the more
externally obedient and respectful his behavior, the less in his
heart he respected and loved her.
Chapter 18
Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the door of
the compartment he stopped short to make room for a lady who was
getting out.
With the insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this
lady's appearance Vronsky classified her as belonging to the best
society. He begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage,
but felt he must glance at her once more; not that she was very
beautiful, not on account of the elegance and modest grace which
were apparent in her whole figure, but because in the expression
of her charming face, as she passed close by him, there was
something peculiarly caressing and soft. As he looked round, she
too turned her head. Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark
from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his
face, as though she were recognizing him, and then promptly
turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In
that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed
eagerness which played over her face, and flitted between the
brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved her red lips. It
was as though her nature were so brimming over with something
that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her
eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light
in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly
perceptible smile.
Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old
lady with black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning
her son, and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from
the seat and handing her maid a bag, she gave her little wrinkled
hand to her son to kiss, and lifting his head from her hand,
kissed him on the cheek.
"You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God."
"You had a good journey?" said her son, sitting down beside her,
and involuntarily listening to a woman's voice outside the door.
He knew it was the voice of the lady he had met at the door.
"All the same I don't agree with you," said the lady's voice.
"It's the Petersburg view, madame."
"Not Petersburg, but simply feminine," she responded.
"Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand."
"Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And could you see if my brother is
here, and send him to me?" said the lady in the doorway, and
stepped back again into the compartment.
"Well, have you found your brother?" said Countess Vronskaya,
addressing the lady.
Vronsky understood now that this was Madame Karenina.
"Your brother is here," he said, standing up. "Excuse me, I did
not know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight," said
Vronsky, bowing, "that no doubt you do not remember me."
"Oh, no," said she, "I should have known you because your mother
and I have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the
way." As she spoke she let the eagerness that would insist on
coming out show itself in her smile. "And still no sign of my
brother."
"Do call him, Alexey," said the old countess. Vronsky stepped
out onto the platform and shouted:
"Oblonsky! Here!"
Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her brother, but
catching sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute
step. And as soon as her brother had reached her, with a gesture
that struck Vronsky by its decision and its grace, she flung her
left arm around his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him
warmly. Vronsky gazed, never taking his eyes from her, and
smiled, he could not have said why. But recollecting that his
mother was waiting for him, he went back again into the carriage.
"She's very sweet, isn't she?" said the countess of Madame
Karenina. "Her husband put her with me, and I was delighted to
have her. We've been talking all the way. And so you, I
hear..._vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant
mieux._"
"I don't know what you are referring to, maman," he answered
coldly. "Come, maman, let us go."
Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the
countess.
"Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother," she
said. "And all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing
more to tell you."
"Oh, no," said the countess, taking her hand. "I could go all
around the world with you and never be dull. You are one of
those delightful women in whose company it's sweet to be silent
as well as to talk. Now please don't fret over your son; you
can't expect never to be parted."
Madame Karenina stood quite still, holding herself very erect,
and her eyes were smiling.
"Anna Arkadyevna," the countess said in explanation to her son,
"has a little son eight years old, I believe, and she has never
been parted from him before, and she keeps fretting over leaving
him."
"Yes, the countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my
son and she of hers," said Madame Karenina, and again a smile
lighted up her face, a caressing smile intended for him.
"I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored," he said,
promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But
apparently she did not care to pursue the conversation in that
strain, and she turned to the old countess.
"Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye,
countess."
"Good-bye, my love," answered the countess. "Let me have a kiss
of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you
simply that I've lost my heart to you."
Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed
it and was delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and
put her cheek to the countess's lips, drew herself up again, and
with the same smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she
gave her hand to Vronsky. He pressed the little hand she gave
him, and was delighted, as though at something special, by the
energetic squeeze with which she freely and vigorously shook his
hand. She went out with the rapid step which bore her rather
fully-developed figure with such strange lightness.
"Very charming," said the countess.
That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her
till her graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile
remained on his face. He saw out of the window how she went up
to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him
something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do
with him, Vronsky, and at that he felt annoyed.
"Well, maman, are you perfectly well?" he repeated, turning to
his mother.
"Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been very good,
and Marie has grown very pretty. She's very interesting."
And she began telling him again of what interested her most--the
christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in
Petersburg, and the special favor shown her elder son by the
Tsar.
"Here's Lavrenty," said Vronsky, looking out of the window; "now
we can go, if you like."
The old butler who had traveled with the countess, came to the
carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the countess
got up to go.
"Come; there's not such a crowd now," said Vronsky.
The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter
the other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother his arm; but just as
they were getting out of the carriage several men ran suddenly by
with panic-stricken faces. The station-master, too, ran by in
his extraordinary colored cap. Obviously something unusual had
happened. The crowd who had left the train were running back
again.
"What?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!... Crushed!..."
was heard among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his sister
on his arm, turned back. They too looked scared, and stopped at
the carriage door to avoid the crowd.
The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch followed
the crowd to find out details of the disaster.
A guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost,
had not heard the train moving back, and had been crushed.
Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies heard the facts
from the butler.
Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated corpse.
Oblonsky was evidently upset. He frowned and seemed ready to
cry.
"Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!"
he said.
Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but
perfectly composed.
"Oh, if you had seen it, countess," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"And his wife was there.... It was awful to see her!.... She
flung herself on the body. They say he was the only support of
an immense family. How awful!"
"Couldn't one do anything for her?" said Madame Karenina in an
agitated whisper.
Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.
"I'll be back directly, maman," he remarked, turning round in the
doorway.
When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan Arkadyevitch was
already in conversation with the countess about the new singer,
while the countess was impatiently looking towards the door,
waiting for her son.
"Now let us be off," said Vronsky, coming in. They went out
together. Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind walked
Madame Karenina with her brother. Just as they were going out of
the station the station-master overtook Vronsky.
"You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly
explain for whose benefit you intend them?"
"For the widow," said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. "I
should have thought there was no need to ask."
"You gave that?" cried Oblonsky, behind, and, pressing his
sister's hand, he added: "Very nice, very nice! Isn't he a
splendid fellow? Good-bye, countess."
And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.
When they went out the Vronsky's carriage had already driven
away. People coming in were still talking of what happened.
"What a horrible death!" said a gentleman, passing by. "They say
he was cut in two pieces."
"On the contrary, I think it's the easiest--instantaneous,"
observed another.
"How is it they don't take proper precautions?" said a third.
Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and
she was with difficulty restraining her tears.
"What is it, Anna?" he asked, when they had driven a few hundred
yards.
"It's an omen of evil," she said.
"What nonsense!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "You've come, that's
the chief thing. You can't conceive how I'm resting my hopes on
you."
"Have you known Vronsky long?" she asked.
"Yes. You know we're hoping he will marry Kitty."
"Yes?" said Anna softly. "Come now, let us talk of you," she
added, tossing her head, as though she would physically shake off
something superfluous oppressing her. "Let us talk of your
affairs. I got your letter, and here I am."
"Yes, all my hopes are in you," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Well, tell me all about it."
And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.
On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed, pressed
her hand, and set off to his office.
Chapter 19
When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the little
drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his
father, giving him a lesson in French reading. As the boy read,
he kept twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly
off his jacket. His mother had several times taken his hand from
it, but the fat little hand went back to the button again. His
mother pulled the button off and put it in her pocket.
"Keep your hands still, Grisha," she said, and she took up her
work, a coverlet she had long been making. She always set to
work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it
nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches.
Though she had sent word the day before to her husband that it
was nothing to her whether his sister came or not, she had made
everything ready for her arrival, and was expecting her
sister-in-law with emotion.
Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it.
Still she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law, was the
wife of one of the most important personages in Petersburg, and
was a Petersburg _grande dame_. And, thanks to this circumstance,
she did not carry out her threat to her husband--that is to say,
she remembered that her sister-in-law was coming. "And, after
all, Anna is in no wise to blame," thought Dolly. "I know
nothing of her except the very best, and I have seen nothing but
kindness and affection from her towards myself." It was true
that as far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at
the Karenins', she did not like their household itself; there was
something artificial in the whole framework of their family life.
"But why should I not receive her? If only she doesn't take it
into her head to console me!" thought Dolly. "All consolation
and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought
over a thousand times, and it's all no use."
All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did
not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart
she could not talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way
or another she would tell Anna everything, and she was
alternately glad at the thought of speaking freely, and angry at
the necessity of speaking of her humiliation with her, his
sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases of good advice and
comfort. She had been on the lookout for her, glancing at her
watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip just that
minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the
bell.
Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she
looked round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not
gladness, but wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law.
"What, here already!" she said as she kissed her.
"Dolly, how glad I am to see you!"
"I am glad, too," said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the
expression of Anna's face to find out whether she knew. "Most
likely she knows," she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna's
face. "Well, come along, I'll take you to your room," she went
on, trying to defer as long as possible the moment of
confidences.
"Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he's grown!" said Anna; and
kissing him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and
flushed a little. "No, please, let us stay here."
She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock
of her black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head
and shook her hair down.
"You are radiant with health and happiness!" said Dolly, almost
with envy.
"I?.... Yes," said Anna. "Merciful heavens, Tanya! You're the
same age as my Seryozha," she added, addressing the little girl
as she ran in. She took her in her arms and kissed her.
"Delightful child, delightful! Show me them all."
She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the
years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and
Dolly could not but appreciate that.
"Very well, we will go to them," she said. "It's a pity Vassya's
asleep."
After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the
drawing room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it
away from her.
"Dolly," she said, "he has told me."
Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of
conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort.
"Dolly, dear," she said, "I don't want to speak for him to you,
nor to try to comfort you; that's impossible. But, darling, I'm
simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!"
Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly
glittered. She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her
hand in her vigorous little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but
her face did not lose its frigid expression. She said:
"To comfort me's impossible. Everything's lost after what has
happened, everything's over!"
And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna
lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:
"But, Dolly, what's to be done, what's to be done? How is it
best to act in this awful position--that's what you must think
of."
"All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the
worst of all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are
the children, I am tied. And I can't live with him! it's a
torture to me to see him."
"Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from
you: tell me about it."
Dolly looked at her inquiringly.
Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna's face.
"Very well," she said all at once. "But I will tell you it from
the beginning. You know how I was married. With the education
mamma gave us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew
nothing. I know they say men tell their wives of their former
lives, but Stiva"--she corrected herself--"Stepan Arkadyevitch
told me nothing. You'll hardly believe it, but till now I
imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I lived
eight years. You must understand that I was so far from
suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then--
try to imagine it--with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the
horror, all the loathsomeness.... You must try and understand
me. To be fully convinced of one's happiness, and all at
once..." continued Dolly, holding back her sobs, "to get a
letter...his letter to his mistress, my governess. No, it's too
awful!" She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her face
in it. "I can understand being carried away by feeling," she
went on after a brief silence, "but deliberately, slyly deceiving
me...and with whom?... To go on being my husband together with
her...it's awful! You can't understand..."
"Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do
understand," said Anna, pressing her hand.
"And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my
position?" Dolly resumed. "Not the slightest! He's happy and
contented."
"Oh, no!" Anna interposed quickly. "He's to be pitied, he's
weighed down by remorse..."
"Is he capable of remorse?" Dolly interrupted, gazing intently
into her sister-in-law's face.
"Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry
for him. We both know him. He's good-hearted, but he's proud,
and now he's so humiliated. What touched me most..." (and here
Anna guessed what would touch Dolly most) "he's tortured by two
things: that he's ashamed for the children's sake, and that,
loving you--yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,"
she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would have answered--"he
has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. 'No, no, she cannot
forgive me,' he keeps saying."
Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she
listened to her words.
"Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it's worse for the
guilty than the innocent," she said, "if he feels that all the
misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am
I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now
would be torture, just because I love my past love for him..."
And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each
time she was softened she began to speak again of what
exasperated her.
"She's young, you see, she's pretty," she went on. "Do you know,
Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and
his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in
his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has
more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or,
worse still, they were silent. Do you understand?"
Again her eyes glowed with hatred.
"And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him?
Never! No, everything is over, everything that once made my
comfort, the reward of my work, and my sufferings.... Would you
believe it, I was teaching Grisha just now: once this was a joy
to me, now it is a torture. What have I to strive and toil for?
Why are the children here? What's so awful is that all at once
my heart's turned, and instead of love and tenderness, I have
nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him."
"Darling Dolly, I understand, but don't torture yourself. You
are so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things
mistakenly."
Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.
"What's to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought
over everything, and I see nothing."
Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to
each word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law.
"One thing I would say," began Anna. "I am his sister, I know
his character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything"
(she waved her hand before her forehead), "that faculty for being
completely carried away, but for completely repenting too. He
cannot believe it, he cannot comprehend now how he can have acted
as he did."
"No; he understands, he understood!" Dolly broke in. "But
I...you are forgetting me...does it make it easier for me?"
"Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize
all the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and
that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after
talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see
your agony, and I can't tell you how sorry I am for you! But,
Dolly, darling, I fully realize your sufferings, only there is
one thing I don't know; I don't know...I don't know how much love
there is still in your heart for him. That you know--whether
there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there is,
forgive him!"
"No," Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her
hand once more.
"I know more of the world than you do," she said. "I know how
men like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with
her. That never happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their
home and wife are sacred to them. Somehow or other these women
are still looked on with contempt by them, and do not touch on
their feeling for their family. They draw a sort of line that
can't be crossed between them and their families. I don't
understand it, but it is so."
"Yes, but he has kissed her..."
"Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you.
I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you,
and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I
know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have
been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for
putting in at every word: 'Dolly's a marvelous woman.' You have
always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this
has not been an infidelity of the heart..."
"But if it is repeated?"
"It cannot be, as I understand it..."
"Yes, but could you forgive it?"
"I don't know, I can't judge.... Yes, I can," said Anna,
thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her thought and
weighing it in her inner balance, she added: "Yes, I can, I can,
I can. Yes, I could forgive it. I could not be the same, no;
but I could forgive it, and forgive it as though it had never
been, never been at all..."
"Oh, of course," Dolly interposed quickly, as though saying what
she had more than once thought, "else it would not be
forgiveness. If one forgives, it must be completely, completely.
Come, let us go; I'll take you to your room," she said, getting
up, and on the way she embraced Anna. "My dear, how glad I am
you came. It has made things better, ever so much better."
Chapter 20
The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that's to say at the
Oblonskys', and received no one, though some of her acquaintances
had already heard of her arrival, and came to call; the same day.
Anna spent the whole morning with Dolly and the children. She
merely sent a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must
not fail to dine at home. "Come, God is merciful," she wrote.
Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his
wife, speaking to him, addressed him as "Stiva," as she had not
done before. In the relations of the husband and wife the same
estrangement still remained, but there was no talk now of
separation, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of
explanation and reconciliation.
Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna
Arkadyevna, but only very slightly, and she came now to her
sister's with some trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this
fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of.
But she made a favorable impression on Anna Arkadyevna--she saw
that at once. Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and
her youth: before Kitty knew where she was she found herself not
merely under Anna's sway, but in love with her, as young girls do
fall in love with older and married women. Anna was not like a
fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In
the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the unflagging
eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in her smile
and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of
twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look
in her eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that
Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that
she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her,
complex and poetic.
After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room, Anna rose
quickly and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a
cigar.
"Stiva," she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and
glancing towards the door, "go, and God help you."
He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through
the doorway.
When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the
sofa where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children.
Either because the children saw that their mother was fond of
this aunt, or that they felt a special charm in her themselves,
the two elder ones, and the younger following their lead, as
children so often do, had clung about their new aunt since
before dinner, and would not leave her side. And it had become a
sort of game among them to sit a close as possible to their aunt,
to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring,
or even touch the flounce of her skirt.
"Come, come, as we were sitting before," said Anna Arkadyevna,
sitting down in her place.
And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled
with his head on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.
"And when is your next ball?" she asked Kitty.
"Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one
always enjoys oneself."
"Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?" Anna
said, with tender irony.
"It's strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs' one always
enjoys oneself, and at the Nikitins' too, while at the Mezhkovs'
it's always dull. Haven't you noticed it?"
"No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys
oneself," said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes that
mysterious world which was not open to her. "For me there are
some less dull and tiresome."
"How can _you_ be dull at a ball?"
"Why should not _I_ be dull at a ball?" inquired Anna.
Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would follow.
"Because you always look nicer than anyone."
Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and
said:
"In the first place it's never so; and secondly, if it were, what
difference would it make to me?"
"Are you coming to this ball?" asked Kitty.
"I imagine it won't be possible to avoid going. Here, take it,"
she said to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off
her white, slender-tipped finger.
"I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a
ball."
"Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that
it's a pleasure to you...Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy
enough without that," she said, putting up a straying lock, which
Grisha had been playing with.
"I imagine you at the ball in lilac."
"And why in lilac precisely?" asked Anna, smiling. "Now,
children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is
calling you to tea," she said, tearing the children from her, and
sending them off to the dining room.
"I know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great
deal of this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part
in it."
"How do you know? Yes."
"Oh! what a happy time you are at," pursued Anna. "I remember,
and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in
Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful
time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle,
happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and
it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and
splendid as it is.... Who has not been through it?"
Kitty smiled without speaking. "But how did she go through it?
How I should like to know all her love story!" thought Kitty,
recalling the unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her
husband.
"I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate you. I
liked him so much," Anna continued. "I met Vronsky at the
railway station."
"Oh, was he there?" asked Kitty, blushing. "What was it Stiva
told you?"
"Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad...I
traveled yesterday with Vronsky's mother," she went on; "and his
mother talked without a pause of him, he's her favorite. I know
mothers are partial, but..."
"What did his mother tell you?"
"Oh, a great deal! And I know that he's her favorite; still one
can see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me
that he had wanted to give up all his property to his brother,
that he had done something extraordinary when he was quite a
child, saved a woman out of the water. He's a hero, in fact,"
said Anna, smiling and recollecting the two hundred roubles he
had given at the station.
But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred roubles. For
some reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt
that there was something that had to do with her in it, and
something that ought not to have been.
"She pressed me very much to go and see her," Anna went on; "and
I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Stiva is staying a
long while in Dolly's room, thank God," Anna added, changing the
subject, and getting up, Kitty fancied, displeased with
something.
"No, I'm first! No, I!" screamed the children, who had finished
tea, running up to their Aunt Anna.
"All together," said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet them, and
embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children,
shrieking with delight.
Chapter 21
Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people.
Stepan Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his
wife's room by the other door.
"I am afraid you'll be cold upstairs," observed Dolly, addressing
Anna; "I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer."
"Oh, please, don't trouble about me," answered Anna, looking
intently into Dolly's face, trying to make out whether there had
been a reconciliation or not.
"It will be lighter for you here," answered her sister-in-law.
"I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot."
"What's the question?" inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out
of his room and addressing his wife.
From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had
taken place.
"I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No
one knows how to do it; I must see to it myself," answered Dolly
addressing him.
"God knows whether they are fully reconciled," thought Anna,
hearing her tone, cold and composed.
"Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties," answered her
husband. "Come, I'll do it all, if you like..."
"Yes, they must be reconciled," thought Anna.
"I know how you do everything," answered Dolly. "You tell Matvey
to do what can't be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to
make a muddle of everything," and her habitual, mocking smile
curved the corners of Dolly's lips as she spoke.
"Full, full reconciliation, full," thought Anna; "thank God!" and
rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and
kissed her.
"Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?" said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing
his wife.
The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her
tone to her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and
cheerful, but not so as to seem as though, having been forgiven,
he had forgotten his offense.
At half-past nine o'clock a particularly joyful and pleasant
family conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys' was
broken up by an apparently simple incident. But this simple
incident for some reason struck everyone as strange. Talking
about common acquaintances in Petersburg, Anna got up quickly.
"She is in my album," she said; "and, by the way, I'll show you
my Seryozha," she added, with a mother's smile of pride.
Towards ten o'clock, when she usually said good-night to her son,
and often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt
depressed at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking
about, she kept coming back in thought to her curly-headed
Seryozha. She longed to look at his photograph and talk of him.
Seizing the first pretext, she got up, and with her light,
resolute step went for her album. The stairs up to her room came
out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.
Just as she was leaving the drawing room, a ring was heard in the
hall.
"Who can that be?" said Dolly.
"It's early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it's late,"
observed Kitty.
"Sure to be someone with papers for me," put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch. When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a
servant was running up to announce the visitor, while the visitor
himself was standing under a lamp. Anna glancing down at once
recognized Vronsky, and a strange feeling of pleasure and at the
same time of dread of something stirred in her heart. He was
standing still, not taking off his coat, pulling something out of
his pocket. At the instant when she was just facing the stairs,
he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and into the expression
of his face there passed a shade of embarrassment and dismay.
With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing behind
her Stepan Arkadyevitch's loud voice calling him to come up, and
the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to
inquire about the dinner they were giving next day to a celebrity
who had just arrived. "And nothing would induce him to come up.
What a queer fellow he is!" added Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew
why he had come, and why he would not come up. "He has been at
home," she thought, "and didn't find me, and thought I should be
here, but he did not come up because he thought it late, and
Anna's here."
All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to
look at Anna's album.
There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man's
calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a
proposed dinner party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to
all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna.
Chapter 22
The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked
up the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with
flowers and footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came
a constant, steady hum, as from a hive, and the rustle of
movement; and while on the landing between trees they gave last
touches to their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard
from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of
the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old man in
civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror,
and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the
stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did
not know. A beardless youth, one of those society youths whom
the old Prince Shtcherbatsky called "young bucks," in an
exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he
went, bowed to them, and after running by, came back to ask Kitty
for a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been given
to Vronsky, she had to promise this youth the second. An
officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and
stroking his mustache, admired rosy Kitty.
Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for
the ball had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this
moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress
over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes
and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her
or her family a moment's attention, as though she had been born
in that tulle and lace, with her hair done up high on her head,
and a rose and two leaves on the top of it.
When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her
mother, tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash,
Kitty had drawn back a little. She felt that everything must be
right of itself, and graceful, and nothing could need setting
straight.
It was one of Kitty's best days. Her dress was not
uncomfortable anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere;
her rosettes were not crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers
with high, hollowed-out heels did not pinch, but gladdened her
feet; and the thick rolls of fair chignon kept up on her head as
if they were her own hair. All the three buttons buttoned up
without tearing on the long glove that covered her hand without
concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket nestled
with special softness round her neck. That velvet was delicious;
at home, looking at her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had felt
that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be
a doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at
the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare
shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sense of chill marble, a feeling
she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips
could not keep from smiling from the consciousness of her own
attractiveness. She had scarcely entered the ballroom and
reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons, lace, and
flowers, waiting to be asked to dance--Kitty was never one of
that throng--when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the
best partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a
renowned director of dances, a married man, handsome and
well-built, Yegorushka Korsunsky. He had only just left the
Countess Bonina, with whom he had danced the first half of the
waltz, and, scanning his kingdom--that is to say, a few couples
who had started dancing--he caught sight of Kitty, entering, and
flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is confined
to directors of balls. Without even asking her if she cared to
dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She
looked round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess,
smiling to her, took it.
"How nice you've come in good time," he said to her, embracing
her waist; "such a bad habit to be late." Bending her left hand,
she laid it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink
slippers began swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the
slippery floor in time to the music.
"It's a rest to waltz with you," he said to her, as they fell
into the first slow steps of the waltz. "It's exquisite--such
lightness, precision." He said to her the same thing he said to
almost all his partners whom he knew well.
She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room
over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball,
for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one vision of
fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round
of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and
tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she
was excited, and at the same time she had sufficient
self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the
ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together.
There--incredibly naked--was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky's wife;
there was the lady of the house; there shone the bald head of
Krivin, always to be found where the best people were. In that
direction gazed the young men, not venturing to approach. There,
too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite figure
and head of Anna in a black velvet gown. And _he_ was there.
Kitty had not seen him since the evening she refused Levin. With
her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at once, and was even aware
that he was looking at her.
"Another turn, eh? You're not tired?" said Korsunsky, a little
out of breath.
"No, thank you!"
"Where shall I take you?"
"Madame Karenina's here, I think...take me to her."
"Wherever you command."
And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight towards
the group in the left corner, continually saying, "Pardon,
mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames"; and steering his course
through the sea of lace, tulle, and ribbon, and not disarranging
a feather, he turned his partner sharply round, so that her slim
ankles, in light transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and
her train floated out in fan shape and covered Krivin's knees.
Korsunsky bowed, set straight his open shirt front, and gave her
his arm to conduct her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, flushed, took
her train from Krivin's knees, and, a little giddy, looked round,
seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had so urgently
wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her full
throat and shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory,
and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown
was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black
hair--her own, with no false additions--was a little wreath of
pansies, and a bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her
sash among white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that
was noticeable was the little wilful tendrils of her curly hair
that would always break free about her neck and temples. Round
her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls.
Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had
pictured her invariably in lilac. But now seeing her in black,
she felt that she had not fully seen her charm. She saw her now
as someone quite new and surprising to her. Now she understood
that Anna could not have been in lilac, and that her charm was
just that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress
could never be noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its
sumptuous lace, was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame,
and all that was seen was she--simple, natural, elegant, and at
the same time gay and eager.
She was standing holding herself, as always, very erect, and when
Kitty drew near the group she was speaking to the master of the
house, her head slightly turned towards him.
"No, I don't throw stones," she was saying, in answer to
something, "though I can't understand it," she went on, shrugging
her shoulders, and she turned at once with a soft smile of
protection towards Kitty. With a flying, feminine glance she
scanned her attire, and made a movement of her head, hardly
perceptible, but understood by Kitty, signifying approval of her
dress and her looks. "You came into the room dancing," she
added.
"This is one of my most faithful supporters," said Korsunsky,
bowing to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. "The
princess helps to make balls happy and successful. Anna
Arkadyevna, a waltz?" he said, bending down to her.
"Why, have you met?" inquired their host.
"Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white
wolves--everyone knows us," answered Korsunsky. "A waltz, Anna
Arkadyevna?"
"I don't dance when it's possible not to dance," she said.
"But tonight it's impossible," answered Korsunsky.
At that instant Vronsky came up.
"Well, since it's impossible tonight, let us start," she said,
not noticing Vronsky's bow, and she hastily put her hand on
Korsunsky's shoulder.
"What is she vexed with him about?" thought Kitty, discerning
that Anna had intentionally not responded to Vronsky's bow.
Vronsky went up to Kitty reminding her of the first quadrille,
and expressing his regret that he had not seen her all this time.
Kitty gazed in admiration at Anna waltzing, and listened to him.
She expected him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and she
glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed slightly, and hurriedly
asked her to waltz, but he had only just put his arm round her
waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly stopped.
Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and
long afterwards--for several years after--that look, full of
love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an
agony of shame.
"_Pardon! pardon!_ Waltz! waltz!" shouted Korsunsky from the other
side of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across
he began dancing himself.
Chapter 23
Vronsky and Kitty waltzed several times round the room. After
the first waltz Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time
to say a few words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up
again for the first quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of
any significance was said: there was disjointed talk between
them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom he described very
amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the future
town theater; and only once the conversation touched her to the
quick, when he asked her about Levin, whether he was here, and
added that he liked him so much. But Kitty did not expect much
from the quadrille. She looked forward with a thrill at her
heart to the mazurka. She fancied that in the mazurka everything
must be decided. The fact that he did not during the quadrille
ask her for the mazurka did not trouble her. She felt sure she
would dance the mazurka with him as she had done at former balls,
and refused five young men, saying she was engaged for the
mazurka. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Kitty
an enchanted vision of delightful colors, sounds, and motions.
She only sat down when she felt too tired and begged for a rest.
But as she was dancing the last quadrille with one of the
tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she chanced to be
vis-a-vis with Vronsky and Anna. She had not been near Anna
again since the beginning of the evening, and now again she saw
her suddenly quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs
of that excitement of success she knew so well in herself; she
saw that she was intoxicated with the delighted admiration she
was exciting. She knew that feeling and knew its signs, and saw
them in Anna; saw the quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and
the smile of happiness and excitement unconsciously playing on
her lips, and the deliberate grace, precision, and lightness of
her movements.
"Who?" she asked herself. "All or one?" And not assisting the
harassed young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the
thread of which he had lost and could not pick up again, she
obeyed with external liveliness the peremptory shouts of
Korsunsky starting them all into the _grand rond_, and then into
the _chaine_, and at the same time she kept watch with a growing
pang at her heart. "No, it's not the admiration of the crowd has
intoxicated her, but the adoration of one. And that one? can it
be he?" Every time he spoke to Anna the joyous light flashed
into her eyes, and the smile of happiness curved her red lips.
she seemed to make an effort to control herself, to try not to
show these signs of delight, but they came out on her face
of themselves. "But what of him?" Kitty looked at him and was
filled with terror. What was pictured so clearly to Kitty in the
mirror of Anna's face she saw in him. What had become of his
always self-possessed resolute manner, and the carelessly serene
expression of his face? Now every time he turned to her, he bent
his head, as though he would have fallen at her feet, and in his
eyes there was nothing but humble submission and dread. "I would
not offend you," his eyes seemed every time to be saying, "but I
want to save myself, and I don't know how." On his face was a
look such as Kitty had never seen before.
They were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most
trivial conversation, but to Kitty it seemed that every word they
said was determining their fate and hers. And strange it was
that they were actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was
with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have made a
better match, yet these words had all the while consequence for
them, and they were feeling just as Kitty did. The whole ball,
the whole world, everything seemed lost in fog in Kitty's soul.
Nothing but the stern discipline of her bringing-up supported her
and forced her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance,
to answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before the
mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a
few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a
moment of despair and horror came for Kitty. She had refused
five partners, and now she was not dancing the mazurka. She had
not even a hope of being asked for it, because she was so
successful in society that the idea would never occur to anyone
that she had remained disengaged till now. She would have to
tell her mother she felt ill and go home, but she had not the
strength to do this. She felt crushed. She went to the furthest
end of the little drawing room and sank into a low chair. Her
light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender
waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was
lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her
fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But
while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass,
and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her
heart ached with a horrible despair.
"But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?" And again she
recalled all she had seen.
"Kitty, what is it?" said Countess Nordston, stepping noiselessly
over the carpet towards her. "I don't understand it."
Kitty's lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.
"Kitty, you're not dancing the mazurka?"
"No, no," said Kitty in a voice shaking with tears.
"He asked her for the mazurka before me," said Countess Nordston,
knowing Kitty would understand who were "he" and "her." "She
said: 'Why, aren't you going to dance it with Princess
Shtcherbatskaya?'"
"Oh, I don't care!" answered Kitty.
No one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that
she had just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused
him because she had put her faith in another.
Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the
mazurka, and told him to ask Kitty.
Kitty danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not
to talk, because Korsunsky was all the time running about
directing the figure. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite her.
She saw them with her long-sighted eyes, and saw them, too, close
by, when they met in the figures, and the more she saw of them
the more convinced was she that her unhappiness was complete.
She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room.
And on Vronsky's face, always so firm and independent, she saw
that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble
submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it
has done wrong.
Anna smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew
thoughtful, and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew
Kitty's eyes to Anna's face. She was fascinating in her simple
black dress, fascinating were her round arms with their
bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of
pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair,
fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and
hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but
there was something terrible and cruel in her fascination.
Kitty admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her
suffering. Kitty felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When
Vronsky saw her, coming across her in the mazurka, he did not at
once recognize her, she was so changed.
"Delightful ball!" he said to her, for the sake of saying
something.
"Yes," she answered.
In the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure,
newly invented by Korsunsky, Anna came forward into the center of
the circle, chose two gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Kitty.
Kitty gazed at her in dismay as she went up. Anna looked at her
with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her hand. But,
noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile by a look of
despair and amazement, she turned away from her, and began gaily
talking to the other lady.
"Yes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in
her," Kitty said to herself.
Anna did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house
began to press her to do so.
"Nonsense, Anna Arkadyevna," said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm
under the sleeve of his dress coat, "I've such an idea for a
_cotillion! Un bijou!_"
And he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him.
Their host smiled approvingly.
"No, I am not going to stay," answered Anna, smiling, but in
spite of her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house
saw from her resolute tone that she would not stay.
"No; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than
I have all the winter in Petersburg," said Anna, looking round at
Vronsky, who stood near her. "I must rest a little before my
journey."
"Are you certainly going tomorrow then?" asked Vronsky.
"Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as it were wondering at the
boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering
brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said
it.
Anna Arkadyevna did not stay to supper, but went home.
Chapter 24
"Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Levin,
as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys', and walked in the
direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with
other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had
any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position." And
he pictured to himself Vronsky, happy, good-natured, clever, and
self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in
which he had been that evening. "Yes, she was bound to choose
him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or
anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she
would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A
nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody." And he
recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the
thought of him. "Isn't he right that everything in the world is
base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother
Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing
him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But I
know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like
him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to
dinner, and came here." Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his
brother's address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a
sledge. All the long way to his brother's, Levin vividly
recalled all the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay's
life. He remembered how his brother, while at the university,
and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his
companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious
rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure,
especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken
out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed
into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the
scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring
up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that
proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding.
Then he recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost
money, and given a promissory note, and against whom he had
himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him.
(This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he
remembered how he had spent a night in the lockup for disorderly
conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful proceedings he
had tried to get up against his brother Sergey Ivanovitch,
accusing him of not having paid him his share of his mother's
fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western
province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble
for assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly
disgusting, yet to Levin it appeared not at all in the same
disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did not know
Nikolay, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.
Levin remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage,
the period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was
seeking in religion a support and a curb for his passionate
temperament, everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at
him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him, called
him Noah and Monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped
him, but everyone had turned away from him with horror and
disgust.
Levin felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his
brother Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was
no more in the wrong than the people who despised him. He was
not to blame for having been born with his unbridled temperament
and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had always wanted
to be good. "I will tell him everything, without reserve, and I
will make him speak without reserve, too, and I'll show him that
I love him, and so understand him," Levin resolved to himself,
as, towards eleven o'clock, he reached the hotel of which he had
the address.
"At the top, 12 and 13," the porter answered Levin's inquiry.
"At home?"
"Sure to be at home."
The door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the
streak of light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound
of a voice, unknown to Levin; but he knew at once that his
brother was there; he heard his cough.
As he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:
"It all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing's
done."
Konstantin Levin looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker
was a young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian
jerkin, and that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without
collar or cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to
be seen. Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the
thought of the strange company in which his brother spent his
life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his
galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was
saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.
"Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes," his
brother's voice responded, with a cough. "Masha! get us some
supper and some wine if there's any left; or else go and get
some."
The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw
Konstantin.
"There's some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch," she said.
"Whom do you want?" said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.
"It's I," answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the
light.
"Who's _I_?" Nikolay's voice said again, still more angrily. He
could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something,
and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes,
and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar,
and yet astonishing in its weirdness and sickliness.
He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin
Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his
hands and big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown
thinner, the same straight mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes
gazed strangely and naively at his visitor.
"Ah, Kostya!" he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and
his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at
the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck
that Konstantin knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a
quite different expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested
on his emaciated face.
"I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don't know you
and don't want to know you. What is it you want?"
He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him.
The worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all
relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin
Levin when he thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and
especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it
all.
"I didn't want to see you for anything," he answered timidly.
"I've simply come to see you."
His brother's timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips
twitched.
"Oh, so that's it?" he said. "Well, come in; sit down. Like
some supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute.
Do you know who this is?" he said, addressing his brother, and
indicating the gentleman in the jerkin: "This is Mr. Kritsky, my
friend from Kiev, a very remarkable man. He's persecuted by the
police, of course, because he's not a scoundrel."
And he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the
room. Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving
to go, he shouted to her, "Wait a minute, I said." And with the
inability to express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin
knew so well, he began, with another look round at everyone, to
tell his brother Kritsky's story: how he had been expelled from
the university for starting a benefit society for the poor
students and Sunday schools; and how he had afterwards been a
teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been driven out of
that too, and had afterwards been condemned for something.
"You're of the Kiev university?" said Konstantin Levin to
Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.
"Yes, I was of Kiev," Kritsky replied angrily, his face
darkening.
"And this woman," Nikolay Levin interrupted him, pointing to her,
"is the partner of my life, Marya Nikolaevna. I took her out of
a bad house," and he jerked his neck saying this; "but I love her
and respect her, and any one who wants to know me," he added,
raising his voice and knitting his brows, "I beg to love her and
respect her. She's just the same as my wife, just the same. So
now you know whom you've to do with. And if you think you're
lowering yourself, well, here's the floor, there's the door."
And again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.
"Why I should be lowering myself, I don't understand."
"Then, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits
and wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it doesn't matter....
Go along."
Chapter 25
"So you see," pursued Nikolay Levin, painfully wrinkling his
forehead and twitching.
It was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and
do.
"Here, do you see?"... He pointed to some sort of iron bars,
fastened together with strings, lying in a corner of the room.
"Do you see that? That's the beginning of a new thing we're
going into. It's a productive association..."
Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly,
consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he
could not force himself to listen to what his brother was telling
him about the association. He saw that this association was a
mere anchor to save him from self-contempt. Nikolay Levin went
on talking:
"You know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with
us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed
that however much they work they can't escape from their position
of beasts of burden. All the profits of labor, on which they
might improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves,
and after that education, all the surplus values are taken from
them by the capitalists. And society's so constituted that the
harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and
landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end. And
that state of things must be changed," he finished up, and he
looked questioningly at his brother.
"Yes, of course," said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red
that had come out on his brother's projecting cheek bones.
"And so we're founding a locksmiths' association, where all the
production and profit and the chief instruments of production
will be in common."
"Where is the association to be?" asked Konstantin Levin.
"In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government."
"But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty
of work as it is. Why a locksmiths' association in a village?"
"Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever
were, and that's why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don't like people
to try and get them out of their slavery," said Nikolay Levin,
exasperated by the objection.
Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless
and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still
more.
"I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch's aristocratic views. I know
that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify
existing evils."
"No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?" said Levin,
smiling.
"Sergey Ivanovitch? I'll tell you what for!" Nikolay Levin
shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. "I'll tell
you what for.... But what's the use of talking? There's only one
thing.... What did you come to me for? You look down on this,
and you're welcome to,--and go away, in God's name go away!" he
shrieked, getting up from his chair. "And go away, and go away!"
"I don't look down on it at all," said Konstantin Levin timidly.
"I don't even dispute it."
At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back. Nikolay Levin
looked round angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and
whispered something.
"I'm not well; I've grown irritable," said Nikolay Levin, getting
calmer and breathing painfully; "and then you talk to me of
Sergey Ivanovitch and his article. It's such rubbish, such
lying, such self-deception. What can a man write of justice who
knows nothing of it? Have you read his article?" he asked
Kritsky, sitting down again at the table, and moving back off
half of it the scattered cigarettes, so as to clear a space.
"I've not read it," Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not
desiring to enter into the conversation.
"Why not?" said Nikolay Levin, now turning with exasperation upon
Kritsky.
"Because I didn't see the use of wasting my time over it."
"Oh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your
time? That article's too deep for many people--that's to say
it's over their heads. But with me, it's another thing; I see
through his ideas, and I know where its weakness lies."
Everyone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his
cap.
"Won't you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round
tomorrow with the locksmith."
Kritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Levin smiled and winked.
"He's no good either," he said. "I see, of course..."
But at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him...
"What do you want now?" he said, and went out to him in the
passage. Left alone with Marya Nikolaevna, Levin turned to her.
"Have you been long with my brother?" he said to her.
"Yes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch's health has become
very poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal," she said.
"That is...how does he drink?"
"Drinks vodka, and it's bad for him."
"And a great deal?" whispered Levin.
"Yes," she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where
Nikolay Levin had reappeared.
"What were you talking about?" he said, knitting his brows, and
turning his scared eyes from one to the other. "What was it?"
"Oh, nothing," Konstantin answered in confusion.
"Oh, if you don't want to say, don't. Only it's no good your
talking to her. She's a wench, and you're a gentleman," he said
with a jerk of the neck. "You understand everything, I see, and
have taken stock of everything, and look with commiseration on my
shortcomings," he began again, raising his voice.
"Nikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch," whispered Marya
Nikolaevna, again going up to him.
"Oh, very well, very well!... But where's the supper? Ah, here
it is," he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. "Here, set it
here," he added angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he
poured out a glassful and drank it greedily. "Like a drink?" he
turned to his brother, and at once became better humored.
"Well, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I'm glad to see you, anyway.
After all's said and done, we're not strangers. Come, have a
drink. Tell me what you're doing," he went on, greedily munching
a piece of bread, and pouring out another glassful. "How are you
living?"
"I live alone in the country, as I used to. I'm busy looking
after the land," answered Konstantin, watching with horror the
greediness with which his brother ate and drank, and trying to
conceal that he noticed it.
"Why don't you get married?"
"It hasn't happened so," Konstantin answered, reddening a little.
"Why not? For me now...everything's at an end! I've made a mess
of my life. But this I've said, and I say still, that if my
share had been given me when I needed it, my whole life would
have been different."
Konstantin made haste to change the conversation.
"Do you know your little Vanya's with me, a clerk in the
countinghouse at Pokrovskoe."
Nikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.
"Yes, tell me what's going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house
standing still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And
Philip the gardener, is he living? How I remember the arbor and
the seat! Now mind and don't alter anything in the house, but
make haste and get married, and make everything as it used to be
again. Then I'll come and see you, if your wife is nice."
"But come to me now," said Levin. "How nicely we would arrange
it!"
"I'd come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey
Ivanovitch."
"You wouldn't find him there. I live quite independently of
him."
"Yes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me
and him," he said, looking timidly into his brother's face.
This timidity touched Konstantin.
"If you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I
tell you that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take
neither side. You're both wrong. You're more wrong externally,
and he inwardly."
"Ah, ah! You see that, you see that!" Nikolay shouted joyfully.
"But I personally value friendly relations with you more
because..."
"Why, why?"
Konstantin could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay
was unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this
was just what he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka
again.
"Enough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!" said Marya Nikolaevna, stretching
out her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.
"Let it be! Don't insist! I'll beat you!" he shouted.
Marya Nikolaevna smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was
at once reflected on Nikolay's face, and she took the bottle.
"And do you suppose she understands nothing?" said Nikolay. "She
understands it all better than any of us. Isn't it true there's
something good and sweet in her?"
"Were you never before in Moscow?" Konstantin said to her, for
the sake of saying something.
"Only you mustn't be polite and stiff with her. It frightens
her. No one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace
who tried her for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame.
Mercy on us, the senselessness in the world!" he cried suddenly.
"These new institutions, these justices of the peace, rural
councils, what hideousness it all is!"
And he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new
institutions.
Konstantin Levin heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of
all public institutions, which he shared with him, and often
expressed, was distasteful to him now from his brother's lips.
"In another world we shall understand it all," he said lightly.
"In another world! Ah, I don't like that other world! I don't
like it," he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother's
eyes. "Here one would think that to get out of all the baseness
and the mess, one's own and other people's, would be a good
thing, and yet I'm afraid of death, awfully afraid of death." He
shuddered. "But do drink something. Would you like some
champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let's go to the Gypsies!
Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs."
His speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one
subject to another. Konstantin with the help of Masha persuaded
him not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.
Masha promised to write to Konstantin in case of need, and to
persuade Nikolay Levin to go and stay with his brother.
Chapter 26
In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening
he reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his
neighbors about politics and the new railways, and, just as in
Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas,
dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But
when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed
coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in
the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own
sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness
trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he
put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the
contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,--he felt that
little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and
self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere
sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the
sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge,
and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in
the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had been his
saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the
Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a
different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be any one
else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the
first place he resolved that from that day he would give up
hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must
have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he
really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way
to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he
had been making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering
his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never
allow himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and not
lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when things should
go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too,
his brother's talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly
at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in
economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice
of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the
peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the
right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means
luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would
allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so
easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the
pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new,
better life, he reached home before nine o'clock at night.
The snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by
a light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea
Mihalovna, who performed the duties of housekeeper in his house.
She was not yet asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling
sleepily out onto the steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too,
almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned round about Levin's
knees, jumping up and longing, but not daring, to put her
forepaws on his chest.
"You're soon back again, sir," said Agafea Mihalovna.
"I got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well;
but at home, one is better," he answered, and went into his
study.
The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The
familiar details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves,
the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long
wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an
open book, a broken ash tray, a manuscript book with his
handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an
instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of
which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his
life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No, you're not
going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different,
but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with
doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts
to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness
which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you."
This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was
telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and
that one can do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice,
he went into the corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and
began brandishing them like a gymnast, trying to restore his
confident temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He
hastily put down the dumbbells.
The bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing
well; but informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying
machine had been a little scorched. This piece of news irritated
Levin. The new drying machine had been constructed and partly
invented by Levin. The bailiff had always been against the
drying machine, and now it was with suppressed triumph that he
announced that the buckwheat had been scorched. Levin was firmly
convinced that if the buckwheat had been scorched, it was only
because the precautions had not been taken, for which he had
hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and reprimanded
the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful event:
Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had
calved.
"Kouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a
lantern. I'll come and look at her," he said to the bailiff.
The cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the
house. Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac
tree, he went into the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy
smell of dung when the frozen door was opened, and the cows,
astonished at the unfamiliar light of the lantern, stirred on the
fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and
piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying down
with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up, but thought
better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him.
Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back
turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed
her all over.
Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and
spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began
lowing, but when Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed,
and, sighing heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue.
The calf, fumbling, poked her nose under her mother's udder, and
stiffened her tail out straight.
"Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way," said Levin, examining
the calf. "Like the mother! though the color takes after the
father; but that's nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the
haunch. Vassily Fedorovitch, isn't she splendid?" he said to the
bailiff, quite forgiving him for the buckwheat under the
influence of his delight in the calf.
"How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the
day after you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch," said the bailiff. "I did inform you about the
machine."
This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of
his work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and
complicated. He went straight from the cowhouse to the counting
house, and after a little conversation with the bailiff and
Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house and straight
upstairs to the drawing room.
Chapter 27
The house was big and old-fashioned, and Levin, though he lived
alone, had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this
was stupid, he knew that it was positively not right, and
contrary to his present new plans, but this house was a whole
world to Levin. It was the world in which his father and mother
had lived and died. They had lived just the life that to Levin
seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had dreamed of
beginning with his wife, his family.
Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was
for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in
his imagination a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a
woman that his mother had been.
He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from
marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family,
and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His
ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the
great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was
one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the
chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And
now he had to give up that.
When he had gone into the little drawing room, where he always
had tea, and had settled himself in his armchair with a book,
and Agafea Mihalovna had brought him tea, and with her usual,
"Well, I'll stay a while, sir," had taken a chair in the window,
he felt that, however strange it might be, he had not parted from
his daydreams, and that he could not live without them. Whether
with her, or with another, still it would be. He was reading a
book, and thinking of what he was reading, and stopping to listen
to Agafea Mihalovna, who gossiped away without flagging, and yet
with all that, all sorts of pictures of family life and work in
the future rose disconnectedly before his imagination. He felt
that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its
place, settled down, and laid to rest.
He heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had forgotten his
duty to God, and with the money Levin had given him to buy a
horse, had been drinking without stopping, and had beaten his
wife till he'd half killed her. He listened, and read his book,
and recalled the whole train of ideas suggested by his reading.
It was Tyndall's _Treatise on Heat_. He recalled his own
criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in the
cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic
insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the joyful
thought: "In two years' time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava
herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen young daughters of
Berkoot and the three others--how lovely!"
He took up his book again. "Very good, electricity and heat are
the same thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity
for the other in the equation for the solution of any problem?
No. Well, then what of it? The connection between all the
forces of nature is felt instinctively.... It's particulary nice
if Pava's daughter should be a red-spotted cow, and all the herd
will take after her, and the other three, too! Splendid! To go
out with my wife and visitors to meet the herd.... My wife says,
Kostya and I looked after that calf like a child.' 'How can it
interest you so much?' says a visitor. 'Everything that
interests him, interests me.' But who will she be?" And he
remembered what had happened at Moscow.... "Well, there's
nothing to be done.... It's not my fault. But now everything
shall go on in a new way. It's nonsense to pretend that life
won't let one, that the past won't let one. One must struggle to
live better, much better."... He raised his head, and fell to
dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet fully digested her delight
at his return, and had run out into the yard to bark, came back
wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the scent of
fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined plaintively,
asking to be stroked.
"There, who'd have thought it?" said Agafea Mihalovna. "The dog
now...why, she understands that her master's come home, and that
he's low-spirited."
"Why low-spirited?"
"Do you suppose I don't see it, sir? It's high time I should know
the gentry. Why, I've grown up from a little thing with them.
It's nothing, sir, so long as there's health and a clear
conscience."
Levin looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his
thought.
"Shall I fetch you another cup?" said she, and taking his cup she
went out.
Laska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and
she promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw.
And in token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened
her mouth a little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky
lips more comfortably about her old teeth, she sank into blissful
repose. Levin watched all her movements attentively.
"That's what I'll do," he said to himself; "that's what I'll do!
Nothing's amiss.... All's well."
Chapter 28
After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her
husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.
"No, I must go, I must go"; she explained to her sister-in-law
the change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to
remember so many things that there was no enumerating them: "no,
it had really better be today!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to
come and see his sister off at seven o'clock.
Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache.
Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English
governess. Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that
they had acute senses, and felt that Anna was quite different
that day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy
to her, that she was not now interested in them,--but they had
abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for
her, and were quite indifferent that she was going away. Anna
was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her
departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down
her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not
in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly
knew well with herself, and which does not come without cause,
and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with self. After
dinner, Anna went up to her room to dress, and Dolly followed
her.
"How queer you are today!" Dolly said to her.
"I? Do you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like
that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very
stupid, but it'll pass off," said Anna quickly, and she bent her
flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap
and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly
bright, and were continually swimming with tears. "In the same
way I didn't want to leave Petersburg, and now I don't want to go
away from here."
"You came here and did a good deed," said Dolly, looking intently
at her.
Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.
"Don't say that, Dolly. I've done nothing, and could do nothing.
I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What
have I done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found
love enough to forgive..."
"If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened!
How happy you are, Anna!" said Dolly. "Everything is clear and
good in your heart."
"Every heart has its own _skeletons_, as the English say."
"You have no sort of _skeleton_, have you? Everything is so clear
in you."
"I have!" said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears,
a sly, ironical smile curved her lips.
"Come, he's amusing, anyway, your _skeleton_, and not depressing,"
said Dolly, smiling.
"No, he's depressing. Do you know why I'm going today instead of
tomorrow? It's a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it
to you," said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an
armchair, and looking straight into Dolly's face.
And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her
ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.
"Yes," Anna went on. "Do you know why Kitty didn't come to
dinner? She's jealous of me. I have spoiled...I've been the
cause of that ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure.
But truly, truly, it's not my fault, or only my fault a little
bit," she said, daintily drawling the words "a little bit."
"Oh, how like Stiva you said that!" said Dolly, laughing.
Anna was hurt.
"Oh no, oh no! I'm not Stiva," she said, knitting her brows.
"That's why I'm telling you, just because I could never let
myself doubt myself for an instant," said Anna.
But at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that
they were not true. She was not merely doubting herself, she
felt emotion at the thought of Vronsky, and was going away sooner
than she had meant, simply to avoid meeting him.
"Yes, Stiva told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that
he..."
"You can't imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant
to be matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite
differently. Possibly against my own will..."
She crimsoned and stopped.
"Oh, they feel it directly?" said Dolly.
"But I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it
on his side," Anna interrupted her. "And I am certain it will
all be forgotten, and Kitty will leave off hating me."
"All the same, Anna, to tell you the truth, I'm not very anxious
for this marriage for Kitty. And it's better it should come to
nothing, if he, Vronsky, is capable of falling in love with you
in a single day."
"Oh, heavens, that would be too silly!" said Anna, and again a
deep flush of pleasure came out on her face, when she heard the
idea, that absorbed her, put into words. "And so here I am going
away, having made an enemy of Kitty, whom I liked so much! Ah,
how sweet she is! But you'll make it right, Dolly? Eh?"
Dolly could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Anna, but she
enjoyed seeing that she too had her weaknesses.
"An enemy? That can't be."
"I did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I
care for you more than ever," said Anna, with tears in her eyes.
"Ah, how silly I am today!"
She passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.
At the very moment of starting Stepan Arkadyevitch arrived, late,
rosy and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.
Anna's emotionalism infected Dolly, and when she embraced her
sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered: "Remember, Anna,
what you've done for me--I shall never forget. And remember
that I love you, and shall always love you as my dearest friend!"
"I don't know why," said Anna, kissing her and hiding her tears.
"You understood me, and you understand. Good-bye, my darling!"
Chapter 29
"Come, it's all over, and thank God!" was the first thought that
came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last
time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to
the carriage till the third bell rang. She sat down on her
lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of
the sleeping-carriage. "Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seryozha
and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old way,
all nice and as usual."
Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that
day, Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with
great care. With her little deft hands she opened and shut her
little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and
carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An
invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies
began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her
feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Anna
answered a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from
the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it
onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper knife and
an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The
fuss and bustle were disturbing; then when the train had started,
she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating
on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the
muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the
conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside,
distracted her attention. Farther on, it was continually the
same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the same
snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming
heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses
of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and
Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was
already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad
hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read
and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is,
to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too
great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of
the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with
noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a
member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering
the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised
everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same.
But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the
smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to
read.
The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English
happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a
desire to go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that
_he_ ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same
thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? "What have I to be
ashamed of?" she asked herself in injured surprise. She laid
down the book and sank against the back of the chair, tightly
gripping the paper cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She
went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant.
She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of
slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there
was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her
memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some
inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were
saying to her, "Warm, very warm, hot." "Well, what is it?" she
said to herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge.
"What does it mean? Am I afraid to look it straight in the face?
Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and this officer boy
there exist, or can exist, any other relations than such as are
common with every acquaintance?" She laughed contemptuously and
took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to
follow what she read. She passed the paper knife over the window
pane, then laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost
laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once without
cause came over her. She felt as though her nerves were strings
being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg.
She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes
twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing,
while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to
strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were
continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain whether the
train were going forwards or backwards, or were standing still
altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger.
"What's that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast?
And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?" She was
afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her
towards it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. She
got up to rouse herself, and slipped off her plaid and the cape
of her warm dress. For a moment she regained her
self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had come
in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing from it, was the
stoveheater, that he was looking at the thermometer, that it was
the wind and snow bursting in after him at the door; but then
everything grew blurred again.... That peasant with the long
waist seemed to be gnawing something on the wall, the old lady
began stretching her legs the whole length of the carriage, and
filling it with a black cloud; then there was a fearful shrieking
and banging, as though someone were being torn to pieces; then
there was a blinding dazzle of red fire before her eyes and a
wall seemed to rise up and hide everything. Anna felt as though
she were sinking down. But it was not terrible, but delightful.
The voice of a man muffled up and covered with snow shouted
something in her ear. She got up and pulled herself together;
she realized that they had reached a station and that this was
the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken
off and her shawl, put them on and moved towards the door.
"Do you wish to get out?" asked Annushka.
"Yes, I want a little air. It's very hot in here." And she
opened the door. The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet
her and struggled with her over the door. But she enjoyed the
struggle.
She opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though
lying in wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch
her up and bear her off, but she clung to the cold door post, and
holding her skirt got down onto the platform and under the
shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful on the
steps, but on the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there
was a lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the frozen,
snowy air, and standing near the carriage looked about the
platform and the lighted station.
Chapter 30
The raging tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the
carriages, about the scaffolding, and round the corner of the
station. The carriages, posts, people, everything that was to be
seen was covered with snow on one side, and was getting more and
more thickly covered. For a moment there would come a lull in
the storm, but then it would swoop down again with such
onslaughts that it seemed impossible to stand against it.
Meanwhile men ran to and fro, talking merrily together, their
steps crackling on the platform as they continually opened and
closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by at her
feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron. "Hand over
that telegram!" came an angry voice out of the stormy darkness on
the other side. "This way! No. 28!" several different voices
shouted again, and muffled figures ran by covered with snow. Two
gentlemen with lighted cigarettes passed by her. She drew one
more deep breath of the fresh air, and had just put her hand out
of her muff to take hold of the door post and get back into the
carriage, when another man in a military overcoat, quite close
beside her, stepped between her and the flickering light of the
lamp post. She looked round, and the same instant recognized
Vronsky's face. Putting his hand to the peak of his cap, he
bowed to her and asked, Was there anything she wanted? Could he
be of any service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him
without answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was
standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his
face and his eyes. It was again that expression of reverential
ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before. More than
once she had told herself during the past few days, and again
only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of
the hundreds of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met
everywhere, that she would never allow herself to bestow a
thought upon him. But now at the first instant of meeting him,
she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to
ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her
that he was here to be where she was.
"I didn't know you were going. What are you coming for?" she
said, letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door
post. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.
"What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her
eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said;
"I can't help it."
At that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles,
sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some
sheet of iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the
engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily. All the
awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He had
said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her
reason. She made no answer, and in her face he saw conflict.
"Forgive me, if you dislike what I said," he said humbly.
He had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so
stubbornly, that for a long while she could make no answer.
"It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man,
to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget..."
"Enough, enough!" she cried trying assiduously to give a stern
expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And
clutching at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and
got rapidly into the corridor of the carriage. But in the little
corridor she paused, going over in her imagination what had
happened. Though she could not recall her own words or his, she
realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had
brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and
blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds, she went
into the carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained
condition which had tormented her before did not only come back,
but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid
every minute that something would snap within her from the
excessive tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that
nervous tension, and in the visions that filled her imagination,
there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there
was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards
morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when she
waked it was daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once
thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the details of that
day and the following came upon her.
At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the
first person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh,
mercy! why do his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at
his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that
struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round
hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips
falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired
eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at
her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though
she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck
by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she
experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate,
familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she
experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she
had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and
painfully aware of it.
"Yes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first
year after marriage, burned with impatience to see you," he said
in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he
almost always took with her, a tone of jeering at anyone who
should say in earnest what he said.
"Is Seryozha quite well?" she asked.
"And is this all the reward," said he, "for my ardor? He's quite
well..."
Chapter 31
Vronsky had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in
his armchair, looking straight before him or scanning the people
who got in and out. If he had indeed on previous occasions
struck and impressed people who did not know him by his air of
unhesitating composure, he seemed now more haughty and
self-possessed than ever. He looked at people as if they were
things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting
opposite him, hated him for that look. The young man asked him
for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even
pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but
a person. But Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he did at the
lamp, and the young man made a wry face, feeling that he was
losing his self-possession under the oppression of this refusal
to recognize him as a person.
Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not
because he believed that he had made an impression on Anna--he
did not yet believe that,--but because the impression she had
made on him gave him happiness and pride.
What would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think.
He felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were
centered on one thing, and bent with fearful energy on one
blissful goal. And he was happy at it. He knew only that he had
told her the truth, that he had come where she was, that all the
happiness of his life, the only meaning in life for him, now lay
in seeing and hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage
at Bologova to get some seltzer water, and caught sight of Anna,
involuntarily his first word had told her just what he thought.
And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it now and was
thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was back in
the carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in
which he had seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his
fancy, making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a
possible future.
When he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his
sleepless night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He
paused near his compartment, waiting for her to get out. "Once
more," he said to himself, smiling unconsciously, "once more I
shall see her walk, her face; she will say something, turn her
head, glance, smile, maybe." But before he caught sight of her,
he saw her husband, whom the station-master was deferentially
escorting through the crowd. "Ah, yes! The husband." Only now
for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that
there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew that she
had a husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and only
now fully believed in him, with his head and shoulders, and his
legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband
calmly take her arm with a sense of property.
Seeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and
severely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather
prominent spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a
disagreeable sensation, such as a man might feel tortured by
thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep, or
a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexey
Alexandrovitch's manner of walking, with a swing of the hips and
flat feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky. He could recognize in
no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was
still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way,
physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with
rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the
second class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went
up to her. He saw the first meeting between the husband and
wife, and noted with a lover's insight the signs of slight
reserve with which she spoke to her husband. "No, she does not
love him and cannot love him," he decided to himself.
At the moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed
too with joy that she was conscious of his being near, and looked
round, and seeing him, turned again to her husband.
"Have you passed a good night?" he asked, bowing to her and her
husband together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to
accept the bow on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as
he might see fit.
"Thank you, very good," she answered.
Her face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness
in it, peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single
instant, as she glanced at him, there was a flash of something in
her eyes, and although the flash died away at once, he was happy
for that moment. She glanced at her husband to find out whether
he knew Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with
displeasure, vaguely recalling who this was. Vronsky's composure
and self-confidence here struck, like a scythe against a stone,
upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey Alexandrovitch.
"Count Vronsky," said Anna.
"Ah! We are acquainted, I believe," said Alexey Alexandrovitch
indifferently, giving his hand.
"You set off with the mother and you return with the son," he
said, articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate
favor he was bestowing.
"You're back from leave, I suppose?" he said, and without waiting
for a reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: "Well,
were a great many tears shed at Moscow at parting?"
By addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand
that he wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards
him, he touched his hat; but Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.
"I hope I may have the honor of calling on you," he said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.
"Delighted," he said coldly. "On Mondays we're at home. Most
fortunate," he said to his wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether,
"that I should just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can
prove my devotion," he went on in the same jesting tone.
"You lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it
much," she responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily
listening to the sound of Vronsky's steps behind them. "But what
has it to do with me?" she said to herself, and she began asking
her husband how Seryozha had got on without her.
"Oh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And...I
must disappoint you...but he has not missed you as your husband
has. But once more _merci,_ my dear, for giving me a day. Our
dear _Samovar_ will be delighted." (He used to call the Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, well known in society, a samovar, because she was
always bubbling over with excitement.) "She has been continually
asking after you. And, do you know, if I may venture to advise
you, you should go and see her today. You know how she takes
everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she's
anxious about the Oblonskys being brought together."
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband's, and
the center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world
with which Anna was, through her husband, in the closest
relations.
"But you know I wrote to her?"
"Still she'll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you're
not too tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the
carriage, while I go to my committee. I shall not be alone at
dinner again," Alexey Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a
sarcastic tone. "You wouldn't believe how I've missed..." And
with a long pressure of her hand and a meaning smile, he put her
in her carriage.
Chapter 32
The first person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed
down the stairs to her, in spite of the governess's call, and
with desperate joy shrieked: "Mother! mother!" Running up to
her, he hung on her neck.
"I told you it was mother!" he shouted to the governess. "I
knew!"
And her son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to
disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in
reality. She had to let herself drop down to the reality to
enjoy him as he really was. But even as he was, he was charming,
with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump, graceful
little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced
almost physical pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and
his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his simple,
confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naive questions.
Anna took out the presents Dolly's children had sent him, and
told her son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and
how Tanya could read, and even taught the other children.
"Why, am I not so nice as she?" asked Seryozha.
"To me you're nicer than anyone in the world."
"I know that," said Seryozha, smiling.
Anna had not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia
Ivanovna was announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall,
stout woman, with an unhealthily sallow face and splendid,
pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but today she seemed to be
seeing her for the first time with all her defects.
"Well, my dear, so you took the olive branch?" inquired Countess
Lidia Ivanovna, as soon as she came into the room.
"Yes, it's all over, but it was all much less serious than we had
supposed," answered Anna. "My _belle-soeur_ is in general too
hasty."
But Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in
everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never
listening to what interested her; she interrupted Anna:
"Yes, there's plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so
worried today."
"Oh, why?" asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.
"I'm beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth,
and sometimes I'm quite unhinged by it. The Society of the
Little Sisters" (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic
institution) "was going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it's
impossible to do anything," added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a
tone of ironical submission to destiny. "They pounce on the
idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and
unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them,
understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply
drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me..."
Pravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia
Ivanovna described the purport of his letter.
Then the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues
against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed
in haste, as she had that day to be at the meeting of some
society and also at the Slavonic committee.
"It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn't
notice it before?" Anna asked herself. "Or has she been very
much irritated today? It's really ludicrous; her object is doing
good; she a Christian, yet she's always angry; and she always has
enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing
good."
After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a
chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three
o'clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the
time till dinner in assisting at her son's dinner (he dined apart
from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in
reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated
on her table.
The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the
journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In
the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and
irreproachable.
She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day.
"What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it
was easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have
done. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out
of the question. To speak of it would be to attach importance to
what has no importance." She remembered how she had told her
husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg
by a young man, one of her husband's subordinates, and how Alexey
Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world
was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest
confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by
jealousy. "So then there's no reason to speak of it? And
indeed, thank God, there's nothing to speak of," she told
herself.
Chapter 33
Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers
at four o'clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come
in to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for
him with petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his
chief secretary. At dinner time (there were always a few people
dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of
Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and
his wife, and a young man who had been recommended to Alexey
Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna went into the drawing room
to receive these guests. Precisely at five o'clock, before the
bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth stroke, Alexey
Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening coat with
two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every
minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch's life was portioned out and
occupied. And to make time to get through all that lay before
him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality.
"Unhasting and unresting," was his motto. He came into the
dining hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to
his wife.
"Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn't believe how
uncomfortable" (he laid stress on the word _uncomfortable_) "it
is to dine alone."
At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters,
and, with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch;
but the conversation was for the most part general, dealing with
Petersburg official and public news. After dinner he spent half
an hour with his guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his
wife's hand, withdrew, and drove off to the council. Anna did
not go out that evening either to the Princess Betsy Tverskaya,
who, hearing of her return, had invited her, nor to the theater,
where she had a box for that evening. She did not go out
principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not
ready. Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her
guests, to the consideration of her attire, was very much
annoyed. She was generally a mistress of the art of dressing
well without great expense, and before leaving Moscow she had
given her dressmaker three dresses to transform. The dresses had
to be altered so that they could not be recognized, and they
ought to have been ready three days before. It appeared that two
dresses had not been done at all, while the other one had not
been altered as Anna had intended. The dressmaker came to
explain, declaring that it would be better as she had done it,
and Anna was so furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of
it afterwards. To regain her serenity completely she went into
the nursery, and spent the whole evening with her son, put him to
bed herself, signed him with the cross, and tucked him up. She
was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had spent the evening
so well. She felt so light-hearted and serene, she saw so
clearly that all that had seemed to her so important on her
railway journey was only one of the common trivial incidents of
fashionable life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed
before anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down at the
hearth with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly
at half-past nine she heard his ring, and he came into the room.
"Here you are at last!" she observed, holding out her hand to
him.
He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.
"Altogether then, I see your visit was a success," he said to
her.
"Oh, yes," she said, and she began telling him about everything
from the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaya, her
arrival, the accident at the station. Then she described the
pity she had felt, first for her brother, and afterwards for
Dolly.
"I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he
is your brother," said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.
Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that
family considerations could not prevent him from expressing his
genuine opinion. She knew that characteristic in her husband,
and liked it.
"I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are
back again," he went on. "Come, what do they say about the new
act I have got passed in the council?"
Anna had heard nothing of this act, And she felt
conscience-stricken at having been able so readily to forget what
was to him of such importance.
"Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation," he
said, with a complacent smile.
She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something
pleasant to him about it, and she brought him by questions to
telling it. With the same complacent smile he told her of the
ovations he had received in consequence of the act he had
passed.
"I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and
steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us."
Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study.
"And you've not been anywhere this evening? You've been dull, I
expect?" he said.
"Oh, no!" she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him
across the room to his study. "What are you reading now?" she
asked.
"Just now I'm reading Duc de Lille, _Poesie des Enfers,_"
he answered. "A very remarkable book."
Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they
love, and, putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the
door of the study. She knew his habit, that had grown into a
necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew, too, that in
spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole
of his time, he considered it his duty to keep up with everything
of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too,
that he was really interested in books dealing with politics,
philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his
nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it,
Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in the world of
art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in
politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often
had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and
poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid
of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions.
He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of
the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which
were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.
"Well, God be with you," she said at the door of the study, where
a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his
armchair. "And I'll write to Moscow."
He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.
"All the same he's a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and
remarkable in his own line," Anna said to herself going back to
her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had
attacked him and said that one could not love him. "But why is
it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?"
Precisely at twelve o'clock, when Anna was still sitting at her
writing table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound
of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly
washed and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her.
"It's time, it's time," said he, with a meaning smile, and he
went into their bedroom.
"And what right had he to look at him like that?" thought Anna,
recalling Vronsky's glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.
Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of
the eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly
flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the
fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away.
Chapter 34
When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his
large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade
Petritsky.
Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly
well-connected, and not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly
in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk, and he had often
been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful
scandals, but he was a favorite both of his comrades and his
superior officers. On arriving at twelve o'clock from the
station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired
carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as
he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine
voice, and Petritsky's voice. "If that's one of the villains,
don't let him in!" Vronsky told the servant not to announce him,
and slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a
friend of Petritsky's, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair,
resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room,
like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table
making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the cavalry
captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from
duty, were sitting each side of her.
"Bravo! Vronsky!" shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his
chair. "Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of
the new coffee pot. Why, we didn't expect you! Hope you're
satisfied with the ornament of your study," he said, indicating
the baroness. "You know each other, of course?"
"I should think so," said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing
the baroness's little hand. "What next! I'm an old friend."
"You're home after a journey," said the baroness, "so I'm flying.
Oh, I'll be off this minute, if I'm in the way."
"You're home, wherever you are, baroness," said Vronsky. "How do
you do, Kamerovsky?" he added, coldly shaking hands with
Kamerovsky.
"There, you never know how to say such pretty things," said the
baroness, turning to Petritsky.
"No; what's that for? After dinner I say things quite as good."
"After dinner there's no credit in them? Well, then, I'll make
you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready," said the
baroness, sitting down again, and anxiously turning the screw in
the new coffee pot. "Pierre, give me the coffee," she said,
addressing Petritsky, whom she called Pierre as a contraction of
his surname, making no secret of her relations with him. "I'll
put it in."
"You'll spoil it!"
"No, I won't spoil it! Well, and your wife?" said the baroness
suddenly, interrupting Vronsky's conversation with his comrade.
"We've been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?"
"No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall
die."
"So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it."
And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many
jokes, about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.
"He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I
to do?" (_He_ was her husband.) "Now I want to begin a suit
against him. What do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the
coffee; it's boiling over. You see, I'm engrossed with business!
I want a lawsuit, because I must have my property. Do you
understand the folly of it, that on the pretext of my being
unfaithful to him," she said contemptuously, "he wants to get the
benefit of my fortune."
Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a
pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and
altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in
talking to such women. In his Petersburg world all people were
divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class,
vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe
that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has
lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest,
and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to
bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts;
and various similar absurdities. This was the class of
old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class
of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and
in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay,
to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh
at everything else.
For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the
impression of a quite different world that he had brought with
him from Moscow. But immediately as though slipping his feet
into old slippers, he dropped back into the light-hearted,
pleasant world he had always lived in.
The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over every one,
and boiled away, doing just what was required of it--that is,
providing much cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a
costly rug and the baroness's gown.
"Well now, good-bye, or you'll never get washed, and I shall have
on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you
would advise a knife to his throat?"
"To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his
lips. He'll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,"
answered Vronsky.
"So at the Francais!" and, with a rustle of her skirts, she
vanished.
Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go,
shook hands and went off to his dressing room.
While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief
outlines his position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had
left Petersburg. No money at all. His father said he wouldn't
give him any and pay his debts. His tailor was trying to get him
locked up, and another fellow, too, was threatening to get him
locked up. The colonel of the regiment had announced that if
these scandals did not cease he would have to leave. As for the
baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since she'd
taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had
found a girl--he'd show her to Vronsky--a marvel, exquisite, in
the strict Oriental style, "genre of the slave Rebecca, don't
you know." He'd had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to
send seconds to him, but of course it would come to nothing.
Altogether everything was supremely amusing and jolly. And, not
letting his comrade enter into further details of his position,
Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting news. As he
listened to Petritsky's familiar stories in the familiar setting
of the rooms he had spent the last three years in, Vronsky felt a
delightful sense of coming back to the careless Petersburg life
that he was used to.
"Impossible!" he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing
basin in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck.
"Impossible!" he cried, at the news that Laura had flung over
Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. "And is he as stupid and
pleased as ever? Well, and how's Buzulukov?"
"Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov--simply lovely!" cried
Petritsky. "You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses
a single court ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet.
Have you seen the new helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so
he's standing.... No, I say, do listen."
"I am listening," answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough
towel.
"Up comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador or other, and,
as ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the
new helmets. The Grand Duchess positively wanted to show the new
helmet to the ambassador. They see our friend standing there."
(Petritsky mimicked how he was standing with the helmet.) "The
Grand Duchess asked him to give her the helmet; he doesn't give
it to her. What do you think of that? Well, every one's winking
at him, nodding, frowning--give it to her, do! He doesn't give
it to her. He's mute as a fish. Only picture it!... Well,
the...what's his name, whatever he was...tries to take the helmet
from him...he won't give it up!... He pulls it from him, and
hands it to the Grand Duchess. 'Here, your Highness,' says he,
'is the new helmet.' She turned the helmet the other side up,
And--just picture it!--plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it,
two pounds of sweetmeats!...He'd been storing them up, the
darling!"
Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when
he was talking of other things, he broke out into his healthy
laugh, showing his strong, close rows of teeth, when he thought
of the helmet.
Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his
valet, got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He
intended, when he had done that, to drive to his brother's and to
Betsy's and to pay several visits with a view to beginning to go
into that society where he might meet Madame Karenina. As he
always did in Petersburg, he left home not meaning to return till
late at night.
PART TWO
Chapter 1
At the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys' house, a
consultation was being held, which was to pronounce on the state
of Kitty's health and the measures to be taken to restore her
failing strength. She had been ill, and as spring came on she
grew worse. The family doctor gave her cod liver oil, then iron,
then nitrate of silver, but as the first and the second and the
third were alike in doing no good, and as his advice when spring
came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was called in. The
celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked
to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar
satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of
barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man
still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it
natural because he did it every day, and felt and thought, as it
seemed to him, no harm as he did it and consequently he
considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of
barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.
There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the
doctors had studied in the same school, had read the same books,
and learned the same science, and though some people said this
celebrated doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess's household
and circle it was for some reason accepted that this celebrated
doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone could
save Kitty. After a careful examination and sounding of the
bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor,
having scrupulously washed his hands, was standing in the drawing
room talking to the prince. The prince frowned and coughed,
listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of
life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in
medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce,
specially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended
the cause of Kitty's illness. "Conceited blockhead!" he thought,
as he listened to the celebrated doctor's chatter about his
daughter's symptoms. The doctor was meantime with difficulty
restraining the expression of his contempt for this old
gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level of his
intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the
old man, and that the principal person in the house was the
mother. Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that
instant the princess came into the drawing room with the family
doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous
he thought the whole performance. The princess was distracted,
and did not know what to do. She felt she had sinned against
Kitty.
"Well, doctor, decide our fate," said the princess. "Tell me
everything."
"Is there hope?" she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she
could not utter the question. "Well, doctor?"
"Immediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague,
and then I will have the honor of laying my opinion before you."
"So we had better leave you?"
"As you please."
The princess went out with a sigh.
When the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly
explaining his opinion, that there was a commencement of
tuberculous trouble, but...and so on. The celebrated doctor
listened to him, and in the middle of his sentence looked at his
big gold watch.
"Yes," said he. "But..."
The family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his
observations.
"The commencement of the tuberculous process we are not, as you
are aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is
nothing definite. But we may suspect it. And there are
indications; malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The
question stands thus: in presence of indications of tuberculous
process, what is to be done to maintain nutrition?"
"But, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the
back in these cases," the family doctor permitted himself to
interpolate with a subtle smile.
"Yes, that's an understood thing," responded the celebrated
physician, again glancing at his watch. "Beg pardon, is the
Yausky bridge done yet, or shall I have to drive around?" he
asked. "Ah! it is. Oh, well, then I can do it in twenty
minutes. So we were saying the problem may be put thus: to
maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The one is in
close connection with the other, one must attack both sides at
once."
"And how about a tour abroad?" asked the family doctor.
"I've no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is
an early stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be
certain, a foreign tour will be of no use. What is wanted is
means of improving nutrition, and not for lowering it." And the
celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden
waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground
that they could do no harm.
The family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.
"But in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of
habits, the removal from conditions calling up reminiscences.
And then the mother wishes it," he added.
"Ah! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those
German quacks are mischievous.... They ought to be persuaded....
Well, let them go then."
He glanced once more at his watch.
"Oh! time's up already," And he went to the door. The celebrated
doctor announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from
him dictated his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once
more.
"What! another examination!" cried the mother, with horror.
"Oh, no, only a few details, princess."
"Come this way."
And the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing
room to Kitty. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in
her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put
through, Kitty stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor
came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All
her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid,
ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as
putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was
broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?
But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother
considered herself to blame.
"May I trouble you to sit down, princess?" the celebrated doctor
said to her.
He sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again
began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at
once got up, furious.
"Excuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This
is the third time you've asked me the same thing."
The celebrated doctor did not take offense.
"Nervous irritability," he said to the princess, when Kitty had
left the room. "However, I had finished..."
And the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess,
as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young
princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of
the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question:
Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation,
as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was
pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in
foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.
It seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass
after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful
when she went back to her daughter, and Kitty pretended to be
more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending
now.
"Really, I'm quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad,
let's go!" she said, and trying to appear interested in the
proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the
journey.
Chapter 2
Soon after the doctor, Dolly had arrived. She knew that there
was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just
up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl,
born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and
anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick
child, to come and hear Kitty's fate, which was to be decided
that day.
"Well, well?" she said, coming into the drawing room, without
taking off her hat. "You're all in good spirits. Good news,
then?"
They tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared
that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great
length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said.
The only point of interest was that it was settled they should go
abroad.
Dolly could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister,
was going away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her
relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had
become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented turned out to be
of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again
at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan
Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever
forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of
infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of
jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of
jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and
even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as
it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean
breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived,
despising him and still more herself, for the weakness. Besides
this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her:
first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the
nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.
"Well, how are all of you?" asked her mother.
"Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill,
and I'm afraid it's scarlatina. I have come here now to hear
about Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if--God
forbid--it should be scarlatina."
The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor's
departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a
few words to her, he turned to his wife:
"How have you settled it? you're going? Well, and what do you
mean to do with me?"
"I suppose you had better stay here, Alexander," said his wife.
"That's as you like."
"Mamma, why shouldn't father come with us?" said Kitty. "It
would be nicer for him and for us too."
The old prince got up and stroked Kitty's hair. She lifted her
head and looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to
her that he understood her better than anyone in the family,
though he did not say much about her. Being the youngest, she
was her father's favorite, and she fancied that his love gave him
insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking
intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her,
and understood all that was not good that was passing within her.
Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he
only patted her hair and said:
"These stupid chignons! There's no getting at the real daughter.
One simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,"
he turned to his elder daughter, "what's your young buck about,
hey?"
"Nothing, father," answered Dolly, understanding that her husband
was meant. "He's always out; I scarcely ever see him," she could
not resist adding with a sarcastic smile.
"Why, hasn't he gone into the country yet--to see about selling
that forest?"
"No, he's still getting ready for the journey."
"Oh, that's it!" said the prince. "And so am I to be getting
ready for a journey too? At your service," he said to his wife,
sitting down. "And I tell you what, Katia," he went on to his
younger daughter, "you must wake up one fine day and say to
yourself: Why, I'm quite well, and merry, and going out again
with father for an early morning walk in the frost. Hey?"
What her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words
Kitty became confused and overcome like a detected criminal.
"Yes, he sees it all, he understands it all, and in these words
he's telling me that though I'm ashamed, I must get over my
shame." She could not pluck up spirit to make any answer. She
tried to begin, and all at once burst into tears, and rushed out
of the room.
"See what comes of your jokes!" the princess pounced down on her
husband. "You're always..." she began a string of reproaches.
The prince listened to the princess's scolding rather a long
while without speaking, but his face was more and more frowning.
"She's so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied,
and you don't feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest
reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!"
said the princess, and by the change in her tone both Dolly and
the prince knew she was speaking of Vronsky. "I don't know why
there aren't laws against such base, dishonorable people."
"Ah, I can't bear to hear you!" said the prince gloomily, getting
up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet
stopping in the doorway. "There are laws, madam, and since
you've challenged me to it, I'll tell you who's to blame for it
all: you and you, you and nobody else. Laws against such young
gallants there have always been, and there still are! Yes, if
there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am,
I'd have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes,
and now you physic her and call in these quacks."
The prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the
princess heard his tone she subsided at once, and became
penitent, as she always did on serious occasions.
"Alexander, Alexander," she whispered, moving to him and
beginning to weep.
As soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went
up to her.
"There, that's enough, that's enough! You're wretched too, I
know. It can't be helped. There's no great harm done. God is
merciful...thanks..." he said, not knowing what he was saying, as
he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on
his hand. And the prince went out of the room.
Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears,
Dolly, with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly
perceived that here a woman's work lay before her, and she
prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and, morally speaking,
tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother
was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so
far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince's
outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and
tender towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But
when her father left them she made ready for what was the chief
thing needful--to go to Kitty and console her.
"I'd been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma:
did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was
here the last time? He told Stiva so."
"Well, what then? I don't understand..."
"So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?... She didn't tell you so?"
"No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she's
too proud. But I know it's all on account of the other."
"Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn't have
refused him if it hadn't been for the other, I know. And then,
he has deceived her so horribly."
It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned
against her daughter, and she broke out angrily.
"Oh, I really don't understand! Nowadays they will all go their
own way, and mothers haven't a word to say in anything, and
then..."
"Mamma, I'll go up to her."
"Well, do. Did I tell you not to?" said her mother.
Chapter 3
When she went into Kitty's little room, a pretty, pink little
room, full of knick-knacks in _vieux saxe,_ as fresh, and pink,
and white, and gay as Kitty herself had been two months ago,
Dolly remembered how they had decorated the room the year before
together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned cold when
she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes
fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her
sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face
did not change.
"I'm just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won't be
able to come to see me," said Dolly, sitting down beside her. "I
want to talk to you."
"What about?" Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.
"What should it be, but your trouble?"
"I have no trouble."
"Nonsense, Kitty. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know
all about it. And believe me, it's of so little
consequence.... We've all been through it."
Kitty did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.
"He's not worth your grieving over him," pursued Darya
Alexandrovna, coming straight to the point.
"No, because he has treated me with contempt," said Kitty, in a
breaking voice. "Don't talk of it! Please, don't talk of it!"
"But who can have told you so? No one has said that. I'm
certain he was in love with you, and would still be in love with
you, if it hadn't...
"Oh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathizing!"
shrieked Kitty, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round
on her chair, flushed crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers,
pinched the clasp of her belt first with one hand and then with
the other. Dolly knew this trick her sister had of clenching her
hands when she was much excited; she knew, too, that in moments
of excitement Kitty was capable of forgetting herself and saying
a great deal too much, and Dolly would have soothed her, but it
was too late.
"What, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?" said Kitty
quickly. "That I've been in love with a man who didn't care a
straw for me, and that I'm dying of love for him? And this is
said to me by my own sister, who imagines that...that...that
she's sympathizing with me!...I don't want these condolences
and humbug!"
"Kitty, you're unjust."
"Why are you tormenting me?"
"But I...quite the contrary...I see you're unhappy..."
But Kitty in her fury did not hear her.
"I've nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too
proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love
me."
"Yes, I don't say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me the
truth," said Darya Alexandrovna, taking her by the hand: "tell
me, did Levin speak to you?..."
The mention of Levin's name seemed to deprive Kitty of the last
vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and
flinging her clasp on the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with
her hands and said:
"Why bring Levin in too? I can't understand what you want to
torment me for. I've told you, and I say it again, that I have
some pride, and never, _never_ would I do as you're doing--go back
to a man who's deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I
can't understand it! You may, but I can't!"
And saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that
Dolly sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Kitty, instead of
running out of the room as she had meant to do, sat down near the
door, and hid her face in her handkerchief.
The silence lasted for two minutes: Dolly was thinking of
herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came
back to her with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded
her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister,
and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of
a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered
sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Kitty was on her knees
before her.
"Dolinka, I am so, so wretched!" she whispered penitently. And
the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Darya
Alexandrovna's skirt.
As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the
machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the
two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what
was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside
matters, they understood each other. Kitty knew that the words
she had uttered in anger about her husband's infidelity and her
humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but
that she had forgiven her. Dolly for her part knew all she had
wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were
correct; that Kitty's misery, her inconsolable misery, was due
precisely to the fact that Levin had made her an offer and she
had refused him, and Vronsky had deceived her, and that she was
fully prepared to love Levin and to detest Vronsky. Kitty said
not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual
condition.
"I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer;
"but can you understand that everything has become hateful,
loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can't
imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything."
"Why, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?" asked Dolly,
smiling.
"The most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can't tell you. It's
not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though
everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing
was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?"
she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister's eyes.
"Father began saying something to me just now.... It seems to me
he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a
ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as
soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it's not the truth, but
I can't drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call
them--I can't bear to see them. It seems to me they're taking
stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a
ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel
ashamed and awkward. And then! The doctor.... Then..." Kitty
hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this change
had taken place in her, Stepan Arkadyevitch had become
insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him
without the grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before
her imagination.
"Oh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest,
most loathsome light," she went on. "That's my illness. Perhaps
it will pass off."
"But you mustn't think about it."
"I can't help it. I'm never happy except with the children at
your house."
"What a pity you can't be with me!"
"Oh, yes, I'm coming. I've had scarlatina, and I'll persuade
mamma to let me."
Kitty insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her
sister's and nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for
scarlatina it turned out to be. The two sisters brought all the
six children successfully through it, but Kitty was no better in
health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad.
Chapter 4
The highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone
knows everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But
this great set has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina
had friends and close ties in three different circles of this
highest society. One circle was her husband's government
official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates,
brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and
belonging to different social strata. Anna found it difficult
now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which
she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all
of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew
their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one
of them. She knew their relations with one another and with the
head authorities, knew who was for whom, and how each one
maintained his position, and where they agreed and disagreed.
But the circle of political, masculine interests had never
interested her, in spite of countess Lidia Ivanovna's influence,
and she avoided it.
Another little set with which Anna was in close relations was the
one by means of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career.
The center of this circle was the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It
was a set made up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women,
and clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever people
belonging to the set had called it "the conscience of Petersburg
society." Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest esteem for this
circle, and Anna with her special gift for getting on with
everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made
friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow,
she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her
that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so
bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little as possible.
The third circle with which Anna had ties was preeminently the
fashionable world--the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous
dresses, the world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as
to avoid sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For the
demi-monde the members of that fashionable world believed that
they despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but
in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was kept up
through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, her cousin's wife, who had an
income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and who had
taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first came out, showed
her much attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of
Countess Lidia Ivanovna's coterie.
"When I'm old and ugly I'll be the same," Betsy used to say; "but
for a pretty young woman like you it's early days for that house
of charity."
Anna had at first avoided as far as she could Princess
Tverskaya's world, because it necessitated an expenditure beyond
her means, and besides in her heart she preferred the first
circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done quite the
contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went out
into the fashionable world. There she met Vronsky, and
experienced an agitating joy at those meetings. She met Vronsky
specially often at Betsy's for Betsy was a Vronsky by birth and
his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he had any chance of
meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he could, of his love.
She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met him there
surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that
had come upon her that day in the railway carriage when she saw
him for the first time. She was conscious herself that her
delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips into a smile,
and she could not quench the expression of this delight.
At first Anna sincerely believed that she was displeased with him
for daring to pursue her. Soon after her return from Moscow, on
arriving at a soiree where she had expected to meet him, and not
finding him there, she realized distinctly from the rush of
disappointment that she had been deceiving herself, and that this
pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her, but that it made
the whole interest of her life.
A celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the
fashionable world was in the theater. Vronsky, seeing his
cousin from his stall in the front row, did not wait till the
entr'acte, but went to her box.
"Why didn't you come to dinner?" she said to him. "I marvel at
the second sight of lovers," she added with a smile, so that no
one but he could hear; "_she wasn't there_. But come after the
opera."
Vronsky looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her
by a smile, and sat down beside her.
"But how I remember your jeers!" continued Princess Betsy, who
took a peculiar pleasure in following up this passion to a
successful issue. "What's become of all that? You're caught, my
dear boy."
"That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his
serene, good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it's only
that I'm not caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose
hope."
"Why, whatever hope can you have?" said Betsy, offended on behalf
of her friend. "_Enendons nous...._" But in her eyes there were
gleams of light that betrayed that she understood perfectly and
precisely as he did what hope he might have.
"None whatever," said Vronsky, laughing and showing his even rows
of teeth. "Excuse me," he added, taking an opera glass out of
her hand, and proceeding to scrutinize, over her bare shoulder,
the row of boxes facing them. "I'm afraid I'm becoming
ridiculous."
He was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in
the eyes of Betsy or any other fashionable people. He was very
well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful
lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be
ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman,
and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her
into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can
never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile
under his mustaches that he lowered the opera glass and looked at
his cousin.
"But why was it you didn't come to dinner?" she said, admiring
him.
"I must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and doing
what, do you suppose? I'll give you a hundred guesses, a
thousand...you'd never guess. I've been reconciling a husband
with a man who'd insulted his wife. Yes, really!"
"Well, did you succeed?"
"Almost."
"You really must tell me about it," she said, getting up. "Come
to me in the next _entr'acte._"
"I can't; I'm going to the French theater."
"From Nilsson?" Betsy queried in horror, though she could not
herself have distinguished Nilsson's voice from any chorus
girl's.
"Can't help it. I've an appointment there, all to do with my
mission of peace."
"Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven,'"
said Betsy, vaguely recollecting she had heard some similar
saying from someone. "Very well, then, sit down, and tell me
what it's all about."
And she sat down again.
Chapter 5
"This is rather indiscreet, but it's so good it's an awful
temptation to tell the story," said Vronsky, looking at her with
his laughing eyes. "I'm not going to mention any names."
"But I shall guess, so much the better."
"Well, listen: two festive young men were driving--"
"Officers of your regiment, of course?"
"I didn't say they were officers,--two young men who had been
lunching."
"In other words, drinking."
"Possibly. They were driving on their way to dinner with a
friend in the most festive state of mind. And they beheld a
pretty woman in a hired sledge; she overtakes them, looks round
at them, and, so they fancy anyway, nods to them and laughs.
They, of course, follow her. They gallop at full speed. To
their amazement, the fair one alights at the entrance of the very
house to which they were going. The fair one darts upstairs to
the top story. They get a glimpse of red lips under a short
veil, and exquisite little feet."
"You describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must be one
of the two."
"And after what you said, just now! Well, the young men go in to
their comrade's; he was giving a farewell dinner. There they
certainly did drink a little too much, as one always does at
farewell dinners. And at dinner they inquire who lives at the
top in that house. No one knows; only their host's valet, in
answer to their inquiry whether any 'young ladies' are living on
the top floor, answered that there were a great many of them
about there. After dinner the two young men go into their host's
study, and write a letter to the unknown fair one. They compose
an ardent epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the
letter upstairs themselves, so as to elucidate whatever might
appear not perfectly intelligible in the letter."
"Why are you telling me these horrible stories? Well?"
"They ring. A maidservant opens the door, they hand her the
letter, and assure the maid that they're both so in love that
they'll die on the spot at the door. The maid, stupefied,
carries in their messages. All at once a gentleman appears with
whiskers like sausages, as red as a lobster, announces that there
is no one living in the flat except his wife, and sends them both
about their business."
"How do you know he had whiskers like sausages, as you say?"
"Ah, you shall hear. I've just been to make peace between them."
"Well, and what then?"
"That's the most interesting part of the story. It appears that
it's a happy couple, a government clerk and his lady. The
government clerk lodges a complaint, and I became a mediator, and
such a mediator!... I assure you Talleyrand couldn't hold a
candle to me."
"Why, where was the difficulty?"
"Ah, you shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we are in
despair, we entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate
misunderstanding. The government clerk with the sausages begins
to melt, but he, too, desires to express his sentiments, and as
soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins to get hot and
say nasty things, and again I'm obliged to trot out all my
diplomatic talents. I allowed that their conduct was bad, but I
urged him to take into consideration their heedlessness, their
youth; then, too, the young men had only just been lunching
together. 'You understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you
to overlook their misbehavior.' The government clerk was
softened once more. 'I consent, count, and am ready to overlook
it; but you perceive that my wife--my wife's a respectable woman
--has been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and
effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....' And you must
understand, the young upstarts are present all the while, and I
have to keep the peace between them. Again I call out all my
diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was about at an end,
our friend the government clerk gets hot and red, and his
sausages stand on end with wrath, and once more I launch out into
diplomatic wiles."
"Ah, he must tell you this story!" said Betsy, laughing, to a
lady who came into her box. "He has been making me laugh so."
"Well, _bonne chance_!" she added, giving Vronsky one finger of the
hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders
she twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so
as to be duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights
into the light of the gas, and the sight of all eyes.
Vronsky drove to the French theater, where he really had to see
the colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single
performance there. He wanted to see him, to report on the result
of his mediation, which had occupied and amused him for the last
three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was implicated in the
affair, and the other culprit was a capital fellow and first-rate
comrade, who had lately joined the regiment, the young Prince
Kedrov. And what was most important, the interests of the
regiment were involved in it too.
Both the young men were in Vronsky's company. The colonel of the
regiment was waited upon by the government clerk, Venden, with a
complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His
young wife, so Venden told the story--he had been married half a
year--was at church with her mother, and suddenly overcome by
indisposition, arising from her interesting condition, she could
not remain standing, she drove home in the first sledge, a
smart-looking one, she came across. On the spot the officers set
off in pursuit of her; she was alarmed, and feeling still more
unwell, ran up the staircase home. Venden himself, on returning
from his office, heard a ring at their bell and voices, went out,
and seeing the intoxicated officers with a letter, he had turned
them out. He asked for exemplary punishment.
"Yes, it's all very well," said the colonel to Vronsky, whom he
had invited to come and see him. "Petritsky's becoming
impossible. Not a week goes by without some scandal. This
government clerk won't let it drop, he'll go on with the thing."
Vronsky saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there
could be no question of a duel in it, that everything must be
done to soften the government clerk, and hush the matter up. The
colonel had called in Vronsky just because he knew him to be an
honorable and intelligent man, and, more than all, a man who
cared for the honor of the regiment. They talked it over, and
decided that Petritsky and Kedrov must go with Vronsky to
Venden's to apologize. The colonel and Vronsky were both fully
aware that Vronsky's name and rank would be sure to contribute
greatly to the softening of the injured husband's feelings.
And these two influences were not in fact without effect; though
the result remained, as Vronsky had described, uncertain.
On reaching the French theater, Vronsky retired to the foyer with
the colonel, and reported to him his success, or non-success.
The colonel, thinking it all over, made up his mind not to pursue
the matter further, but then for his own satisfaction proceeded
to cross-examine Vronsky about his interview; and it was a long
while before he could restrain his laughter, as Vronsky described
how the government clerk, after subsiding for a while, would
suddenly flare up again, as he recalled the details, and how
Vronsky, at the last half word of conciliation, skillfully
maneuvered a retreat, shoving Petritsky out before him.
"It's a disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can't
fight the gentleman! Was he so awfully hot?" he commented,
laughing. "But what do you say to Claire today? She's
marvelous," he went on, speaking of a new French actress.
"However often you see her, every day she's different. It's only
the French who can do that."
Chapter 6
Princess Betsy drove home from the theater, without waiting for
the end of the last act. She had only just time to go into her
dressing room, sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it,
set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing room,
when one after another carriages drove up to her huge house in
Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance,
and the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the
mornings behind the glass door, to the edification of the
passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the
visitors pass by him into the house.
Almost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged
coiffure and freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests
at the other door of the drawing room, a large room with dark
walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted table, gleaming with
the light of candles, white cloth, silver samovar, and
transparent china tea things.
The hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves.
Chairs were set with the aid of footmen, moving almost
imperceptibly about the room; the party settled itself, divided
into two groups: one round the samovar near the hostess, the
other at the opposite end of the drawing room, round the handsome
wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined
black eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it
always does, for the first few minutes, broken up by meetings,
greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about for
something to rest upon.
"She's exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she's
studied Kaulbach," said a diplomatic attache in the group round
the ambassador's wife. "Did you notice how she fell down?..."
"Oh, please, don't let us talk about Nilsson! No one can
possibly say anything new about her," said a fat, red-faced,
flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old
silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya, noted for her simplicity
and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed _enfant terrible_.
Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups,
and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of one
and then of the other. "Three people have used that very phrase
about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made
a compact about it. And I can't see why they liked that remark
so."
The conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new
subject had to be thought of again.
"Do tell me something amusing but not spiteful," said the
ambassador's wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant
conversation called by the English, _small talk_. She addressed
the attache, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.
"They say that that's a difficult task, that nothing's amusing
that isn't spiteful," he began with a smile. "But I'll try. Get
me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject's given
me, it's easy to spin something round it. I often think that the
celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it
difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so
stale..."
"That has been said long ago," the ambassador's wife interrupted
him, laughing.
The conversation began amiably, but just because it was too
amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to
the sure, never-failing topic--gossip.
"Don't you think there's something Louis Quinze about
Tushkevitch?" he said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired
young man, standing at the table.
"Oh, yes! He's in the same style as the drawing room and that's
why it is he's so often here."
This conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to
what could not be talked of in that room--that is to say, of the
relations of Tushkevitch with their hostess.
Round the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been
meanwhile vacillating in just the same way between three
inevitable topics: the latest piece of public news, the
theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on the last
topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.
"Have you heard the Maltishtcheva woman--the mother, not the
daughter--has ordered a costume in _diable rose_ color?"
"Nonsense! No, that's too lovely!"
"I wonder that with her sense--for she's not a fool, you know--
that she doesn't see how funny she is."
Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the
luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled
merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.
The husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent
collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came
into the drawing room before going to his club. Stepping
noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up to Princess Myakaya.
"How did you like Nilsson?" he asked.
"Oh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled
me!" she responded. "Please don't talk to me about the opera;
you know nothing about music. I'd better meet you on your own
ground, and talk about your majolica and engravings. Come now,
what treasure have you been buying lately at the old curiosity
shops?"
"Would you like me to show you? But you don't understand such
things."
"Oh, do show me! I've been learning about them at those--what's
their names?...the bankers...they've some splendid engravings.
They showed them to us."
"Why, have you been at the Schuetzburgs?" asked the hostess from
the samovar.
"Yes, _ma chere_. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told
us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds," Princess
Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was
listening; "and very nasty sauce it was, some green mess. We had
to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteen pence, and
everybody was very much pleased with it. I can't run to
hundred-pound sauces."
"She's unique!" said the lady of the house.
"Marvelous!" said someone.
The sensation produced by Princess Myakaya's speeches was always
unique, and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the
fact that though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she
said simple things with some sense in them. In the society in
which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the
wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had
that effect, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.
As everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and
so the conversation around the ambassador's wife had dropped,
Princess Betsy tried to bring the whole party together, and
turned to the ambassador's wife.
"Will you really not have tea? You should come over here by us."
"No, we're very happy here," the ambassador's wife responded with
a smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been
begun.
"It was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the
Karenins, husband and wife.
"Anna is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There's
something strange about her," said her friend.
"The great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of
Alexey Vronsky," said the ambassador's wife.
"Well, what of it? There's a fable of Grimm's about a man
without a shadow, a man who's lost his shadow. And that's his
punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a
punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow."
"Yes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end," said
Anna's friend.
"Bad luck to your tongue!" said Princess Myakaya suddenly.
"Madame Karenina's a splendid woman. I don't like her husband,
but I like her very much."
"Why don't you like her husband? He's such a remarkable man,"
said the ambassador's wife. "My husband says there are few
statesmen like him in Europe."
"And my husband tells me just the same, but I don't believe it,"
said Princess Myakaya. "If our husbands didn't talk to us, we
should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my
thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper...but doesn't
it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to
consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought
myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, _he's a fool,_
though only in a whisper, everything's explained, isn't it?"
"How spiteful you are today!"
"Not a bit. I'd no other way out of it. One of the two had to
be a fool. And, well, you know one can't say that of oneself."
"'No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is
satisfied with his wit.'" The attache repeated the French
saying.
"That's just it, just it," Princess Myakaya turned to him. "But
the point is that I won't abandon Anna to your mercies. She's so
nice, so charming. How can she help it if they're all in love
with her, and follow her about like shadows?"
"Oh, I had no idea of blaming her for it," Anna's friend said in
self-defense.
"If no one follows us about like a shadow, that's no proof that
we've any right to blame her."
And having duly disposed of Anna's friend, the Princess Myakaya
got up, and together with the ambassador's wife, joined the group
at the table, where the conversation was dealing with the king of
Prussia.
"What wicked gossip were you talking over there?" asked Betsy.
"About the Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey
Alexandrovitch," said the ambassador's wife with a smile, as she
sat down at the table.
"Pity we didn't hear it!" said Princess Betsy, glancing towards
the door. "Ah, here you are at last!" she said, turning with a
smile to Vronsky, as he came in.
Vronsky was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he
was meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in
with the quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people
from whom one has only just parted.
"Where do I come from?" he said, in answer to a question from the
ambassador's wife. "Well, there's no help for it, I must
confess. From the _opera bouffe_. I do believe I've seen it a
hundred times, and always with fresh enjoyment. It's exquisite!
I know it's disgraceful, but I go to sleep at the opera, and I
sit out the _opera bouffe_ to the last minute, and enjoy it.
This evening..."
He mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell something
about her; but the ambassador's wife, with playful horror, cut
him short.
"Please don't tell us about that horror."
"All right, I won't especially as everyone knows those horrors."
"And we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the
correct thing, like the opera," chimed in Princess Myakaya.
Chapter 7
Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was
Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking towards the
door, and his face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully,
intently, and at the same time timidly, he gazed at the
approaching figure, and slowly he rose to his feet. Anna walked
into the drawing room. Holding herself extremely erect, as
always, looking straight before her, and moving with her swift,
resolute, and light step, that distinguished her from all other
society women, she crossed the short space to her hostess, shook
hands with her, smiled, and with the same smile looked around at
Vronsky. Vronsky bowed low and pushed a chair up for her.
She acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed a little, and
frowned. But immediately, while rapidly greeting her
acquaintances, and shaking the hands proffered to her, she
addressed Princess Betsy:
"I have been at Countess Lidia's, and meant to have come here
earlier, but I stayed on. Sir John was there. He's very
interesting."
"Oh, that's this missionary?"
"Yes; he told us about the life in India, most interesting
things."
The conversation, interrupted by her coming in, flickered up
again like the light of a lamp being blown out.
"Sir John! Yes, Sir John; I've seen him. He speaks well. The
Vlassieva girl's quite in love with him."
"And is it true the younger Vlassieva girl's to marry Topov?"
"Yes, they say it's quite a settled thing."
"I wonder at the parents! They say it's a marriage for love."
"For love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of
love in these days?" said the ambassador's wife.
"What's to be done? It's a foolish old fashion that's kept up
still," said Vronsky.
"So much the worse for those who keep up the fashion. The only
happy marriages I know are marriages of prudence."
"Yes, but then how often the happiness of these prudent marriages
flies away like dust just because that passion turns up that they
have refused to recognize," said Vronsky.
"But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties
have sown their wild oats already. That's like scarlatina--one
has to go through it and get it over."
"Then they ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like
smallpox."
"I was in love in my young days with a deacon," said the Princess
Myakaya. "I don't know that it did me any good."
"No; I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make
mistakes and then correct them," said Princess Betsy.
"Even after marriage?" said the ambassador's wife playfully.
"'It's never too late to mend.'" The attache repeated the
English proverb.
"Just so," Betsy agreed; "one must make mistakes and correct
them. What do you think about it?" she turned to Anna, who, with
a faintly perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening
in silence to the conversation.
"I think," said Anna, playing with the glove she had taken off,
"I think...of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many
hearts, so many kinds of love."
Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart waiting for
what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she
uttered these words.
Anna suddenly turned to him.
"Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya's very ill."
"Really?" said Vronsky, knitting his brows.
Anna looked sternly at him.
"That doesn't interest you?"
"On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they
told you, if I may know?" he questioned.
Anna got up and went to Betsy.
"Give me a cup of tea," she said, standing at her table.
While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky went up to Anna.
"What is it they write to you?" he repeated.
"I often think men have no understanding of what's not honorable
though they're always talking of it," said Anna, without
answering him. "I've wanted to tell you so a long while," she
added, and moving a few steps away, she sat down at a table in a
corner covered with albums.
"I don't quite understand the meaning of your words," he said,
handing her the cup.
She glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat
down.
"Yes, I have been wanting to tell you," she said, not looking at
him. "You behaved wrongly, very wrongly."
"Do you suppose I don't know that I've acted wrongly? But who
was the cause of my doing so?"
"What do you say that to me for?" she said, glancing severely at
him.
"You know what for," he answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her
glance and not dropping his eyes.
Not he, but she, was confused.
"That only shows you have no heart," she said. But her eyes said
that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of
him.
"What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love."
"Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that
hateful word," said Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt
that by that very word "forbidden" she had shown that she
acknowledged certain rights over him, and by that very fact was
encouraging him to speak of love. "I have long meant to tell you
this," she went on, looking resolutely into his eyes, and hot all
over from the burning flush on her cheeks. "I've come on purpose
this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell you
that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you
force me to feel to blame for something."
He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her
face.
"What do you wish of me?" he said simply and seriously.
"I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty's forgiveness," she
said.
"You don't wish that?" he said.
He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what
she wanted to say.
"If you love me, as you say," she whispered, "do so that I may
be at peace."
His face grew radiant.
"Don't you know that you're all my life to me? But I know no
peace, and I can't give it to you; all myself--and love...yes. I
can't think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me.
And I see no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see
a chance of despair, of wretchedness...or I see a chance of
bliss, what bliss!... Can it be there's no chance of it?" he
murmured with his lips; but she heard.
She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be
said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of
love, and made no answer.
"It's come!" he thought in ecstasy. "When I was beginning to
despair, and it seemed there would be no end--it's come! She
loves me! She owns it!"
"Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be
friends," she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite
differently.
"Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we
shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in
your hands."
She would have said something, but he interrupted her.
"I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as
I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and
I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful
to you."
"I don't want to drive you away."
"Only don't change anything, leave everything as it is," he said
in a shaky voice. "Here's your husband."
At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the
room with his calm, awkward gait.
Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the
house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his
deliberate, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter,
ridiculing someone.
"Your Rambouillet is in full conclave," he said, looking round at
all the party; "the graces and the muses."
But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his--
"sneering," as she called it, using the English word, and like a
skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious
conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the subject, and
began seriously defending the new imperial decree against
Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.
Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.
"This is getting indecorous," whispered one lady, with an
expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.
"What did I tell you?" said Anna's friend.
But not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the
Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the
direction of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle,
as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was
the only person who did not once look in that direction, and was
not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered upon.
Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on
everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to
listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and went up to Anna.
"I'm always amazed at the clearness and precision of your
husband's language," she said. "The most transcendental ideas
seem to be within my grasp when he's speaking."
"Oh, yes!" said Anna, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not
understanding a word of what Betsy had said. She crossed over to
the big table and took part in the general conversation.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his
wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she
answered, not looking at him, that she was staying to supper.
Alexey Alexandrovitch made his bows and withdrew.
The fat old Tatar, Madame Karenina's coachman, was with
difficulty holding one of her pair of grays, chilled with the
cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman stood opening the
carriage door. The hall porter stood holding open the great door
of the house. Anna Arkadyevna, with her quick little hand, was
unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in the hook of her fur
cloak, and with bent head listening to the words Vronsky murmured
as he escorted her down.
"You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was
saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that
there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you
dislike so...yes, love!..."
"Love," she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, at
the very instant she unhooked the lace, she added, "Why I don't
like the word is that it means too much to me, far more than you
can understand," and she glanced into his face. "_Au revoir!_"
She gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she
passed by the porter and vanished into the carriage.
Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the
palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy
in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims
that evening than during the last two months.
Chapter 8
Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in
the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart,
in eager conversation with him about something. But he noticed
that to the rest of the party this appeared something striking
and improper, and for that reason it seemed to him too to be
improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his
wife.
On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he
usually did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on
the Papacy at the place where he had laid the paper-knife in it,
and read till one o'clock, just as he usually did. But from time
to time he rubbed his high forehead and shook his head, as
though to drive away something. At his usual time he got up and
made his toilet for the night. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet come
in. With a book under his arm he went upstairs. But this
evening, instead of his usual thoughts and meditations upon
official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife and
something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his usual
habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down
the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not
go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first
to think thoroughly over the position that had just arisen.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk
to his wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple
matter. But now, when he began to think over the question that
had just presented itself, it seemed to him very complicated and
difficult.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to
his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have
confidence in one's wife. Why one ought to have confidence--
that is to say, complete conviction that his young wife would
always love him--he did not ask himself. But he had no
experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in
her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his
conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one
ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he
was standing face to face with something illogical and
irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the
possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and
this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because
it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived
and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection
of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he
had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to
that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge,
should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that
there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge
that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived.
For the first time the question presented itself to him of the
possibility of his wife's loving someone else, and he was
horrified at it.
He did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread
over the resounding parquet of the dining room, where one lamp
was burning, over the carpet of the dark drawing room, in which
the light was reflected on the big new portrait of himself
hanging over the sofa, and across her boudoir, where two candles
burned, lighting up the portraits of her parents and woman
friends, and the pretty knick-knacks of her writing table, that
he knew so well. He walked across her boudoir to the bedroom
door, and turned back again. At each turn in his walk,
especially at the parquet of the lighted dining room, he halted
and said to himself, "Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to;
I must express my view of it and my decision." And he turned
back again. "But express what--what decision?" he said to
himself in the drawing room, and he found no reply. "But after
all," he asked himself before turning into the boudoir, "what has
occurred? Nothing. She was talking a long while with him. But
what of that? Surely women in society can talk to whom they
please. And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and her,"
he told himself as he went into her boudoir; but this dictum,
which had always had such weight with him before, had now no
weight and no meaning at all. And from the bedroom door he
turned back again; but as he entered the dark drawing room some
inner voice told him that it was not so, and that if others
noticed it that showed that there was something. And he said to
himself again in the dining room, "Yes, I must decide and put a
stop to it, and express my view of it..." And again at the turn
in the drawing room he asked himself, "Decide how?" And again
he asked himself, "What had occurred?" and answered, "Nothing,"
and recollected that jealousy was a feeling insulting to his
wife; but again in the drawing room he was convinced that
something had happened. His thoughts, like his body, went round
a complete circle, without coming upon anything new. He noticed
this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her boudoir.
There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case
lying at the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly
changed. He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and
feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her
personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she
could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so
alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm which
he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in thought and
feeling in another person's place was a spiritual exercise not
natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual
exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.
"And the worst of it all," thought he, "is that just now, at the
very moment when my great work is approaching completion" (he was
thinking of the project he was bringing forward at the time),
"when I stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies,
just now this stupid worry should fall foul of me. But what's to
be done? I'm not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and
worry without having the force of character to face them.
"I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my
mind," he said aloud.
"The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be
passing in her soul, that's not my affair; that's the affair of
her conscience, and falls under the head of religion," he said to
himself, feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to
which division of regulating principles this new circumstance
could be properly referred.
"And so," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, "questions as to
her feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with
which I can have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As
the head of the family, I am a person bound in duty to guide her,
and consequently, in part the person responsible; I am bound to
point out the danger I perceive, to warn her, even to use my
authority. I ought to speak plainly to her." And everything that
he would say tonight to his wife took clear shape in Alexey
Alexandrovitch's head. Thinking over what he would say, he
somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time and mental
powers for domestic consumption, with so little to show for it,
but, in spite of that, the form and contents of the speech before
him shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in his head as a
ministerial report.
"I must say and express fully the following points: first,
exposition of the value to be attached to public opinion and to
decorum; secondly, exposition of religious significance of
marriage; thirdly, if need be, reference to the calamity possibly
ensuing to our son; fourthly, reference to the unhappiness likely
to result to herself." And, interlacing his fingers, Alexey
Alexandrovitch stretched them, and the joints of the fingers
cracked. This trick, a bad habit, the cracking of his fingers,
always soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts, so
needful to him at this juncture.
There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door.
Alexey Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of the room.
A woman's step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, ready for his speech, stood compressing his
crossed fingers, waiting to see if the crack would not come
again. One joint cracked.
Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was
aware that she was close, and though he was satisfied with his
speech, he felt frightened of the explanation confronting him...
Chapter 9
Anna came in with hanging head, playing with the tassels of her
hood. Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not
one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a
conflagration in the midst of a dark night. On seeing her
husband, Anna raised her head and smiled, as though she had just
waked up.
"You're not in bed? What a wonder!" she said, letting fall her
hood, and without stopping, she went on into the dressing room.
"It's late, Alexey Alexandrovitch," she said, when she had gone
through the doorway.
"Anna, it's necessary for me to have a talk with you."
"With me?" she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the
door of the dressing room, and looked at him. "Why, what is it?
What about?" she asked, sitting down. "Well, let's talk, if it's
so necessary. But it would be better to get to sleep."
Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself,
at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her
words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt
herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt
that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting
her.
"Anna, I must warn you," he began.
"Warn me?" she said. "Of what?"
She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did
not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed
anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her
words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to
bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him
the reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and
pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now
to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that
she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal.
He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always
hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More
than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed
at that, but as it were said straight out to him: "Yes, it's shut
up, and so it must be, and will be in future." Now he
experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home
and finding his own house locked up. "But perhaps the key may
yet be found," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.
"I want to warn you," he said in a low voice, "that through
thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be
talked about in society. Your too animated conversation this
evening with Count Vronsky" (he enunciated the name firmly and
with deliberate emphasis) "attracted attention."
He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him
now with their impenetrable look, and, as he talked, he felt all
the uselessness and idleness of his words.
"You're always like that," she answered, as though completely
misapprehending him, and of all he had said only taking in the
last phrase. "One time you don't like my being dull, and another
time you don't like my being lively. I wasn't dull. Does that
offend you?"
Alexey Alexandrovitch shivered, and bent his hands to make the
joints crack.
"Oh, please, don't do that, I do so dislike it," she said.
"Anna, is this you?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly making
an effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his
fingers.
"But what is it all about?" she said, with such genuine and droll
wonder. "What do you want of me?"
Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead and his
eyes. He saw that instead of doing as he had intended--that is
to say, warning his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the
world--he had unconsciously become agitated over what was the
affair of her conscience, and was struggling against the barrier
he fancied between them.
"This is what I meant to say to you," he went on coldly and
composedly, "and I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy,
as you know, a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall
never allow myself to be influenced by it; but there are certain
rules of decorum which cannot be disregarded with impunity. This
evening it was not I observed it, but judging by the impression
made on the company, everyone observed that your conduct and
deportment were not altogether what could be desired."
"I positively don't understand," said Anna, shrugging her
shoulders--"He doesn't care," she thought. "But other people
noticed it, and that's what upsets him."--"You're not well,
Alexey Alexandrovitch," she added, and she got up, and would have
gone towards the door; but he moved forward as though he would
stop her.
His face was ugly and forbidding, as Anna had never seen him.
She stopped, and bending her head back and on one side, began
with her rapid hand taking out her hairpins.
"Well, I'm listening to what's to come," she said, calmly and
ironically; "and indeed I listen with interest, for I should
like to understand what's the matter."
She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone
in which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.
"To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right,
and besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful," began
Alexey Alexandrovitch. "Ferreting in one's soul, one often
ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed. Your
feelings are an affair of your own conscience; but I am in duty
bound to you, to myself, and to God, to point out to you your
duties. Our life has been joined, not by man, but by God. That
union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature
brings its own chastisement."
"I don't understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am,
unluckily," she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair,
feeling for the remaining hairpins.
"Anna, for God's sake don't speak like that!" he said gently.
"Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much
for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you."
For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes
died away; but the word love threw her into revolt again. She
thought: "Love? Can he love? If he hadn't heard there was such
a thing as love, he would never have used the word. He doesn't
even know what love is."
"Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don't understand," she said.
"Define what it is you find..."
"Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not
speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are
our son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my
words seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be
that they are called forth by my mistaken impression. In that
case, I beg you to forgive me. But if you are conscious
yourself of even the smallest foundation for them, then I beg you
to think a little, and if your heart prompts you, to speak out to
me..."
Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly
unlike what he had prepared.
"I have nothing to say. And besides," she said hurriedly, with
difficulty repressing a smile, "it's really time to be in bed."
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying more, went into
the bedroom.
When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips
were sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna
got into her bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would
begin to speak to her again. She both feared his speaking and
wished for it. But he was silent. She waited for a long while
without moving, and had forgotten about him. She thought of that
other; she pictured him, and felt how her heart was flooded with
emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him. Suddenly she
heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first instant Alexey
Alexandrovitch seemed, as it were, appalled at his own snoring,
and ceased; but after an interval of two breathings the snore
sounded again, with a new tranquil rhythm.
"It's late, it's late," she whispered with a smile. A long while
she lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost
fancied she could herself see in the darkness.
Chapter 10
From that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for
his wife. Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society,
as she had always done, was particularly often at Princess
Betsy's, and met Vronsky everywhere. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw
this, but could do nothing. All his efforts to draw her into
open discussion she confronted with a barrier which he could not
penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly
everything was the same, but their inner relations were
completely changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch, a man of great power
in the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this. Like an
ox with head bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he felt
was lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he
felt that he must try once more, that by kindness, tenderness,
and persuasion there was still hope of saving her, of bringing
her back to herself, and every day he made ready to talk to her.
But every time he began talking to her, he felt that the spirit
of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of her, had
possession of him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite
unlike that in which he had meant to talk. Involuntarily he
talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering at anyone who
should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was
impossible to say what needed to be said to her.
Chapter 11
That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one
absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that
which for Anna had been an impossible, terrible, and even for
that reason more entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been
fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering,
and besought her to be calm, not knowing how or why.
"Anna! Anna!" he said with a choking voice, "Anna, for pity's
sake!..."
But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and
gay, now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from
the sofa where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet;
she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.
"My God! Forgive me!" she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to
her bosom.
She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to
humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no
one in her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for
forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her
humiliation, and she could say nothing more. He felt what a
murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life.
That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage
of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the
memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame.
Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him.
But in spite of all the murderer's horror before the body of his
victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what
he has gained by his murder.
And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the
body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and
shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir.
"Yes, these kisses--that is what has been bought by this shame.
Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine--the hand of my
accomplice." She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on
his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said
nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she
got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but
it was only the more pitiful for that.
"All is over," she said; "I have nothing but you. Remember
that."
"I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of
this happiness..."
"Happiness!" she said with horror and loathing and her horror
unconsciously infected him. "For pity's sake, not a word, not a
word more."
She rose quickly and moved away from him.
"Not a word more," she repeated, and with a look of chill
despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt
that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of
shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new
life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this
feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day
and the third day, she still found no words in which she could
express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not
even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that
was in her soul.
She said to herself: "No, just now I can't think of it, later on,
when I am calmer." But this calm for thought never came; every
time the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen
to her, and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she
drove those thoughts away.
"Later, later," she said--"when I am calmer."
But in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her
position presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness.
One dream haunted her almost every night. She dreamed that both
were her husbands at once, that both were lavishing caresses on
her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her hands, and
saying, "How happy we are now!" And Alexey Vronsky was there
too, and he too was her husband. And she was marveling that it
had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to them,
laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both
of them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her
like a nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.
Chapter 12
In the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Levin
shuddered and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his
rejection, he said to himself: "This was just how I used to
shudder and blush, thinking myself utterly lost, when I was
plucked in physics and did not get my remove; and how I thought
myself utterly ruined after I had mismanaged that affair of my
sister's that was entrusted to me. And yet, now that years have
passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so
much. It will be the same thing too with this trouble. Time
will go by and I shall not mind about this either."
But three months had passed and he had not left off minding about
it; and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been
those first days. He could not be at peace because after
dreaming so long of family life, and feeling himself so ripe for
it, he was still not married, and was further than ever from
marriage. He was painfully conscious himself, as were all about
him, that at his years it is not well for man to be alone. He
remembered how before starting for Moscow he had once said to his
cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he liked talking
to: "Well, Nikolay! I mean to get married," and how Nikolay had
promptly answered, as of a matter on which there could be no
possible doubt: "And high time too, Konstantin Demitrievitch."
But marriage had now become further off than ever. The place was
taken, and whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew
in that place, he felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover,
the recollection of the rejection and the part he had played in
the affair tortured him with shame. However often he told
himself that he was in no wise to blame in it, that recollection,
like other humiliating reminiscences of a similar kind, made him
twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as in every man's,
actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought
to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was
far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but
humiliating reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with
these memories was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful
position in which he must have appeared to others that evening.
But time and work did their part. Bitter memories were more and
more covered up by the incidents--paltry in his eyes, but really
important--of his country life. Every week he thought less
often of Kitty. He was impatiently looking forward to the news
that she was married, or just going to be married, hoping that
such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure him.
Meanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the
delays and treacheries of spring,--one of those rare springs in
which plants, beasts, and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring
roused Levin still more, and strengthened him in his resolution
of renouncing all his past and building up his lonely life firmly
and independently. Though many of the plans with which he had
returned to the country had not been carried out, still his most
important resolution--that of purity--had been kept by him. He
was free from that shame, which had usually harassed him after a
fall; and he could look everyone straight in the face. In
February he had received a letter from Marya Nikolaevna telling
him that his brother Nikolay's health was getting worse, but that
he would not take advice, and in consequence of this letter Levin
went to Moscow to his brother's and succeeded in persuading him
to see a doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He
succeeded so well in persuading his brother, and in lending him
money for the journey without irritating him, that he was
satisfied with himself in that matter. In addition to his
farming, which called for special attention in spring, and in
addition to reading, Levin had begun that winter a work on
agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account the
character of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable
data of the question, like the climate and the soil, and
consequently deducing all the principles of scientific culture,
not simply from the data of soil and climate, but from the data
of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable character of the
laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in consequence of
his solitude, his life was exceedingly full. Only rarely he
suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray
ideas to someone besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he
not infrequently fell into discussion upon physics, the theory of
agriculture, and especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea
Mihalovna's favorite subject.
Spring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been
steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the
sun, but at night there were even seven degrees of frost. There
was such a frozen surface on the snow that they drove the wagons
anywhere off the roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a
sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds
swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm,
driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday the wind dropped, and
a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding the
mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in
nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the
cracking and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming
torrents; and on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog
parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of
cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had come. In the
morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin
layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was
quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth.
The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its
tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and
the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee
was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow.
Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the
ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and
marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high
across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in
patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the
pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating
mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered
with the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of
peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes
in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and
harrows. The real spring had come.
Chapter 13
Levin put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a cloth
jacket, instead of his fur cloak, and went out to look after his
farm, stepping over streams of water that flashed in the sunshine
and dazzled his eyes, and treading one minute on ice and the next
into sticky mud.
Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out
into the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not
what form will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned
in its swelling buds, hardly knew what undertakings he was going
to begin upon now in the farm work that was so dear to him. But
he felt that he was full of the most splendid plans and projects.
First of all he went to the cattle. The cows had been let out
into their paddock, and their smooth sides were already shining
with their new, sleek, spring coats; they basked in the sunshine
and lowed to go to the meadow. Levin gazed admiringly at the
cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of their
condition, and gave orders for them to be driven out into the
meadow, and the calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman
ran gaily to get ready for the meadow. The cowherd girls,
picking up their petticoats, ran splashing through the mud with
bare legs, still white, not yet brown from the sun, waving brush
wood in their hands, chasing the calves that frolicked in the
mirth of spring.
After admiring the young ones of that year, who were particularly
fine--the early calves were the size of a peasant's cow, and
Pava's daughter, at three months old, was as big as a yearling--
Levin gave orders for a trough to be brought out and for them to
be fed in the paddock. But it appeared that as the paddock had
not been used during the winter, the hurdles made in the autumn
for it were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who, according to
his orders, ought to have been at work at the thrashing machine.
But it appeared that the carpenter was repairing the harrows,
which ought to have been repaired before Lent. This was very
annoying to Levin. It was annoying to come upon that everlasting
slovenliness in the farm work against which he had been striving
with all his might for so many years. The hurdles, as he
ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been carried to
the cart-horses' stable; and there broken, as they were of light
construction, only meant for feeding calves. Moreover, it was
apparent also that the harrows and all the agricultural
implements, which he had directed to be looked over and repaired
in the winter, for which very purpose he had hired three
carpenters, had not been put into repair, and the harrows were
being repaired when they ought to have been harrowing the field.
Levin sent for his bailiff, but immediately went off himself to
look for him. The bailiff, beaming all over, like everyone that
day, in a sheepskin bordered with astrachan, came out of the
barn, twisting a bit of straw in his hands.
"Why isn't the carpenter at the thrashing machine?"
"Oh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want repairing.
Here it's time they got to work in the fields."
"But what were they doing in the winter, then?"
"But what did you want the carpenter for?"
"Where are the hurdles for the calves' paddock?"
"I ordered them to be got ready. What would you have with those
peasants!" said the bailiff, with a wave of his hand.
"It's not those peasants but this bailiff!" said Levin, getting
angry. "Why, what do I keep you for?" he cried. But, bethinking
himself that this would not help matters, he stopped short in the
middle of a sentence, and merely sighed. "Well, what do you say?
Can sowing begin?" he asked, after a pause.
"Behind Turkin tomorrow or the next day they might begin."
"And the clover?"
"I've sent Vassily and Mishka; they're sowing. Only I don't know
if they'll manage to get through; it's so slushy."
"How many acres?"
"About fifteen."
"Why not sow all?" cried Levin.
That they were only sowing the clover on fifteen acres, not on
all the forty-five, was still more annoying to him. Clover, as
he knew, both from books and from his own experience, never did
well except when it was sown as early as possible, almost in the
snow. And yet Levin could never get this done.
"There's no one to send. What would you have with such a set of
peasants? Three haven't turned up. And there's Semyon..."
"Well, you should have taken some men from the thatching."
"And so I have, as it is."
"Where are the peasants, then?"
"Five are making compote" (which meant compost), "four are
shifting the oats for fear of a touch of mildew, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch."
Levin knew very well that "a touch of mildew" meant that his
English seed oats were already ruined. Again they had not done
as he had ordered.
"Why, but I told you during Lent to put in pipes," he cried.
"Don't put yourself out; we shall get it all done in time."
Levin waved his hand angrily, went into the granary to glance at
the oats, and then to the stable. The oats were not yet spoiled.
But the peasants were carrying the oats in spades when they might
simply let them slide down into the lower granary; and arranging
for this to be done, and taking two workmen from there for sowing
clover, Levin got over his vexation with the bailiff. Indeed, it
was such a lovely day that one could not be angry.
"Ignat!" he called to the coachman, who, with his sleeves tucked
up, was washing the carriage wheels, "saddle me..."
"Which, sir?"
"Well, let it be Kolpik."
"Yes, sir."
While they were saddling his horse, Levin again called up the
bailiff, who was hanging about in sight, to make it up with him,
and began talking to him about the spring operations before them,
and his plans for the farm.
The wagons were to begin carting manure earlier, so as to get all
done before the early mowing. And the ploughing of the further
land to go on without a break so as to let it ripen lying fallow.
And the mowing to be all done by hired labor, not on
half-profits. The bailiff listened attentively, and obviously
made an effort to approve of his employer's projects. But still
he had that look Levin knew so well that always irritated him, a
look of hopelessness and despondency. That look said: "That's
all very well, but as God wills."
Nothing mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it was the
tone common to all the bailiffs he had ever had. They had all
taken up that attitude to his plans, and so now he was not
angered by it, but mortified, and felt all the more roused to
struggle against this, as it seemed, elemental force continually
ranged against him, for which he could find no other expression
than "as God wills."
"If we can manage it, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said the bailiff.
"Why ever shouldn't you manage it?"
"We positively must have another fifteen laborers. And they
don't turn up. There were some here today asking seventy roubles
for the summer."
Levin was silent. Again he was brought face to face with that
opposing force. He knew that however much they tried, they could
not hire more than forty--thirty-seven perhaps or thirty-eight--
laborers for a reasonable sum. Some forty had been taken on, and
there were no more. But still he could not help struggling
against it.
"Send to Sury, to Tchefirovka; if they don't come we must look
for them."
"Oh, I'll send, to be sure," said Vassily Fedorovitch
despondently. "But there are the horses, too, they're not good
for much."
"We'll get some more. I know, of course," Levin added laughing,
"you always want to do with as little and as poor quality as
possible; but this year I'm not going to let you have things your
own way. I'll see to everything myself."
"Why, I don't think you take much rest as it is. It cheers us up
to work under the master's eye..."
"So they're sowing clover behind the Birch Dale? I'll go and
have a look at them," he said, getting on to the little bay cob,
Kolpik, who was led up by the coachman.
"You can't get across the streams, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," the
coachman shouted.
"All right, I'll go by the forest."
And Levin rode through the slush of the farmyard to the gate and
out into the open country, his good little horse, after his long
inactivity, stepping out gallantly, snorting over the pools, and
asking, as it were, for guidance. If Levin had felt happy before
in the cattle pens and farmyard, he felt happier yet in the open
country. Swaying rhythmically with the ambling paces of his good
little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh scent of the snow and
the air, as he rode through his forest over the crumbling, wasted
snow, still left in parts, and covered with dissolving tracks, he
rejoiced over every tree, with the moss reviving on its bark and
the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came out of the forest,
in the immense plain before him, his grass fields stretched in an
unbroken carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only
spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of melting
snow. He was not put out of temper even by the sight of the
peasants' horses and colts trampling down his young grass (he
told a peasant he met to drive them out), nor by the sarcastic
and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met on the way, and
asked, "Well, Ipat, shall we soon be sowing?" "We must get the
ploughing done first, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," answered Ipat.
The further he rode, the happier he became, and plans for the
land rose to his mind each better than the last; to plant all his
fields with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow
should not lie under them; to divide them up into six fields of
arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard at
the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct
movable pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And
then eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and
four hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.
Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the
hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the
laborers who had been sent to sow clover. A cart with the seed
in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the middle of the
crop, and the winter corn had been torn up by the wheels and
trampled by the horse. Both the laborers were sitting in the
hedge, probably smoking a pipe together. The earth in the cart,
with which the seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but
crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the
laborer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to work
sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the laborers
Levin seldom lost his temper. When Vassily came up, Levin told
him to lead the horse to the hedge.
"It's all right, sir, it'll spring up again," responded Vassily.
"Please don't argue," said Levin, "but do as you're told."
"Yes, sir," answered Vassily, and he took the horse's head.
"What a sowing, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," he said, hesitating;
"first rate. Only it's a work to get about! You drag a ton of
earth on your shoes."
"Why is it you have earth that's not sifted?" said Levin.
"Well, we crumble it up," answered Vassily, taking up some seed
and rolling the earth in his palms.
Vassily was not to blame for their having filled up his cart with
unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.
Levin had more than once already tried a way he knew for stifling
his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he
tried that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging
the huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and getting off
his horse, he took the sieve from Vassily and started sowing
himself.
"Where did you stop?"
Vassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin went forward
as best he could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was as
difficult as on a bog, and by the time Levin had ended the row he
was in a great heat, and he stopped and gave up the sieve to
Vassily.
"Well, master, when summer's here, mind you don't scold me for
these rows," said Vassily.
"Eh?" said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of his
method.
"Why, you'll see in the summer time. It'll look different. Look
you where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it! I do my
best, Konstantin Dmitrievitch, d'ye see, as I would for my own
father. I don't like bad work myself, nor would I let another
man do it. What's good for the master's good for us too. To
look out yonder now," said Vassily, pointing, "it does one's
heart good."
"It's a lovely spring, Vassily."
"Why, it's a spring such as the old men don't remember the like
of. I was up home; an old man up there has sown wheat too, about
an acre of it. He was saying you wouldn't know it from rye."
"Have you been sowing wheat long?"
"Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You gave
me two measures. We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood."
"Well, mind you crumble up the clods," said Levin, going towards
his horse, "and keep an eye on Mishka. And if there's a good
crop you shall have half a rouble for every acre."
"Humbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it is."
Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last
year's clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the
spring corn.
The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It
had survived everything, and stood up vividly green through the
broken stalks of last year's wheat. The horse sank in up to
the pasterns, and he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of
the half-thawed ground. Over the ploughland riding was utterly
impossible; the horse could only keep a foothold where there was
ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank deep in at each step.
The ploughland was in splendid condition; in a couple of days it
would be fit for harrowing and sowing. Everything was capital,
everything was cheering. Levin rode back across the streams,
hoping the water would have gone down. And he did in fact get
across, and startled two ducks. "There must be snipe too," he
thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met the
forest keeper, who confirmed his theory about the snipe.
Levin went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner
and get his gun ready for the evening.
Chapter 14
As he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Levin
heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the
house.
"Yes, that's someone from the railway station," he thought,
"just the time to be here from the Moscow train...Who could it
be? What if it's brother Nikolay? He did say: 'Maybe I'll go
to the waters, or maybe I'll come down to you.'" He felt
dismayed and vexed for the first minute, that his brother
Nikolay's presence should come to disturb his happy mood of
spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he
opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened
feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart
that it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out
from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from
the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not
his brother. "Oh, if it were only some nice person one could
talk to a little!" he thought.
"Ah," cried Levin joyfully, flinging up both his hands. "Here's
a delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!" he shouted,
recognizing Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"I shall find out for certain whether she's married, or when
she's going to be married," he thought. And on that delicious
spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at
all.
"Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his
nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health
and good spirits. "I've come to see you in the first place," he
said, embracing and kissing him, "to have some stand-shooting
second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third."
"Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get
along in a sledge?"
"In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin
Dmitrievitch," answered the driver, who knew him.
"Well, I'm very, very glad to see you," said Levin, with a
genuine smile of childlike delight.
Levin led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where
Stepan Arkadyevitch's things were carried also--a bag, a gun in
a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and
change his clothes, Levin went off to the counting house to speak
about the ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very
anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall with
inquiries about dinner.
"Do just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible," he
said, and went to the bailiff.
When he came back, Stepan Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came
out of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs
together.
"Well, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall
understand what the mysterious business is that you are always
absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how
nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always spring and fine
weather like that day. "And your nurse is simply charming! A
pretty maid in an apron might be even more agreeable, perhaps;
but for your severe monastic style it does very well."
Stepan Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news;
especially interesting to Levin was the news that his brother,
Sergey Ivanovitch, was intending to pay him a visit in the
summer.
Not one word did Stepan Arkadyevitch say in reference to Kitty
and the Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his
wife. Levin was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very
glad of his visitor. As always happened with him during his
solitude, a mass of ideas and feelings had been accumulating
within him, which he could not communicate to those about him.
And now he poured out upon Stepan Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in
the spring, and his failures and plans for the land, and his
thoughts and criticisms on the books he had been reading, and the
idea of his own book, the basis of which really was, though he
was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all the old books on
agriculture. Stepan Arkadyevitch, always charming, understanding
everything at the slightest reference, was particularly charming
on this visit, and Levin noticed in him a special tenderness, as
it were, and a new tone of respect that flattered him.
The efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner
should be particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends
attacking the preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread
and butter, salt goose and salted mushrooms, and in Levin's
finally ordering the soup to be served without the accompaniment
of little pies, with which the cook had particularly meant to
impress their visitor. But though Stepan Arkadyevitch was
accustomed to very different dinners, he thought everything
excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and
above all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup,
and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean wine--
everything was superb and delicious.
"Splendid, splendid!" he said, lighting a fat cigar after the
roast. "I feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful
shore after the noise and jolting of a steamer. And so you
maintain that the laborer himself is an element to be studied and
to regulate the choice of methods in agriculture. Of course, I'm
an ignorant outsider; but I should fancy theory and its
application will have its influence on the laborer too."
"Yes, but wait a bit. I'm not talking of political economy, I'm
talking of the science of agriculture. It ought to be like the
natural sciences, and to observe given phenomena and the laborer
in his economic, ethnographical..."
At that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.
"Oh, Agafea Mihalovna," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the
tips of his plump fingers, "what salt goose, what herb
brandy!...What do you think, isn't it time to start, Kostya?" he
added.
Levin looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare
tree-tops of the forest.
"Yes, it's time," he said. "Kouzma, get ready the trap," and he
ran downstairs.
Stepan Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover
off his varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it,
began to get ready his expensive new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who
already scented a big tip, never left Stepan Arkadyevitch's side,
and put on him both his stockings and boots, a task which Stepan
Arkadyevitch readily left him.
"Kostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes...I told
him to come today, he's to be brought in and to wait for me..."
"Why, do you mean to say you're selling the forest to Ryabinin?"
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"To be sure I do. I have had to do business with him,
'positively and conclusively.'"
Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed. "Positively and conclusively" were
the merchant's favorite words.
"Yes, it's wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where
her master's going!" he added, patting Laska, who hung about
Levin, whining and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.
The trap was already at the steps when they went out.
"I told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?"
"No, we'd better drive," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting into
the trap. He sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and
lighted a cigar. "How is it you don't smoke? A cigar is a sort
of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign
of pleasure. Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is
how I should like to live!"
"Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling.
"No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You
like horses--and you have them; dogs--you have them; shooting--
you have it; farming--you have it."
"Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for
what I haven't," said Levin, thinking of Kitty.
Stepan Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said
nothing.
Levin was grateful to Oblonsky for noticing, with his
never-failing tact, that he dreaded conversation about the
Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about them. But now Levin
was longing to find out what was tormenting him so, yet he had
not the courage to begin.
"Come, tell me how things are going with you," said Levin,
bethinking himself that it was not nice of him to think only of
himself.
Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes sparkled merrily.
"You don't admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when
one has had one's rations of bread--to your mind it's a crime;
but I don't count life as life without love," he said, taking
Levin's question his own way. "What am I to do? I'm made that
way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives
oneself so much pleasure..."
"What! is there something new, then?" queried Levin.
"Yes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of
Ossian's women.... Women, such as one sees in dreams.... Well,
these women are sometimes to be met in reality...and these women
are terrible. Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that
however much you study it, it's always perfectly new."
"Well, then, it would be better not to study it."
"No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the
search for truth, not in the finding it."
Levin listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he
made, he could not in the least enter into the feelings of his
friend and understand his sentiments and the charm of studying
such women.
Chapter 15
The place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a
stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Levin got
out of the trap and led Oblonsky to a corner of a mossy, swampy
glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a
double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the
fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat,
fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were
free.
Gray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite
him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick
forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about
in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs,
and their buds swollen almost to bursting.
From the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still
remained, came the faint sound of narrow winding threads of water
running away. Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered
from tree to tree.
In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last
year's leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth
of the grass.
"Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!" Levin said
to himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving
beside a blade of young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed
sometimes down at the wet mossy ground, sometimes at Laska
listening all alert, sometimes at the sea of bare tree tops that
stretched on the slope below him, sometimes at the darkening sky,
covered with white streaks of cloud.
A hawk flew high over a forest far away with slow sweep of its
wings; another flew with exactly the same motion in the same
direction and vanished. The birds twittered more and more loudly
and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far off, and Laska,
starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and putting her
head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the stream
was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual cuckoo call,
and then gave a hoarse, hurried call and broke down.
"Imagine! the cuckoo already!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming
out from behind a bush.
"Yes, I hear it," answered Levin, reluctantly breaking the
stillness with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself.
"Now it's coming!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch's figure again went behind the bush, and
Levin saw nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by
the red glow and blue smoke of a cigarette.
"Tchk! tchk!" came the snapping sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch
cocking his gun.
"What's that cry?" asked Oblonsky, drawing Levin's attention to
a prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice,
in play.
"Oh, don't you know it? That's the hare. But enough talking!
Listen, it's flying!" almost shrieked Levin, cocking his gun.
They heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact
time, so well known to the sportsman, two seconds later--
another, a third, and after the third whistle the hoarse,
guttural cry could be heard.
Levin looked about him to right and to left, and there, just
facing him against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of
tender shoots of the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was
flying straight towards him; the guttural cry, like the even
tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long
beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very
instant when Levin was taking aim, behind the bush where Oblonsky
stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped like
an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came the red flash and
the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though trying to
keep up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant,
and fell with a heavy splash on the slushy ground.
"Can I have missed it?" shouted Stepan Arkadyevitch, who could
not see for the smoke.
"Here it is!" said Levin, pointing to Laska, who with one ear
raised, wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as
though she would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling,
brought the dead bird to her master. "Well, I'm glad you were
successful," said Levin, who, at the same time, had a sense of
envy that he had not succeeded in shooting the snipe.
"It was a bad shot from the right barrel," responded Stepan
Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. "Sh...it's flying!"
The shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard
again. Two snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only
whistling, not crying, flew straight at the very heads of the
sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and like swallows
the snipe turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from
sight.
The stand-shooting was capital. Stepan Arkadyevitch shot two
more birds and Levin two, of which one was not found. It began
to get dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft
light low down in the west behind the birch trees, and high up in
the east twinkled the red lights of Arcturus. Over his head
Levin made out the stars of the Great Bear and lost them again.
The snipe had ceased flying; but Levin resolved to stay a little
longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch, should
be above it, and the stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly
plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear of the
Great Bear with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the
dark blue sky, yet still he waited.
"Isn't it time to go home?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
It was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.
"Let's stay a little while," answered Levin.
"As you like."
They were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.
"Stiva!" said Levin unexpectedly; "how is it you don't tell me
whether your sister-in-law's married yet, or when she's going to
be?"
Levin felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied,
could affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Stepan
Arkadyevitch replied.
"She's never thought of being married, and isn't thinking of it;
but she's very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad.
They're positively afraid she may not live."
"What!" cried Levin. "Very ill? What is wrong with her? How
has she...?"
While they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was
looking upwards at the sky, and reproachfully at them.
"They have chosen a time to talk," she was thinking. "It's on
the wing.... Here it is, yes, it is. They'll miss it," thought
Laska.
But at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle
which, as it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized
their guns and two flashes gleamed, and two gangs sounded at the
very same instant. The snipe flying high above instantly folded
its wings and fell into a thicket, bending down the delicate
shoots.
"Splendid! Together!" cried Levin, and he ran with Laska into the
thicket to look for the snipe.
"Oh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?" he wondered. "Yes,
Kitty's ill.... Well, it can't be helped; I'm very sorry," he
thought.
"She's found it! Isn't she a clever thing?" he said, taking the
warm bird from Laska's mouth and packing it into the almost full
game bag. "I've got it, Stiva!" he shouted.
Chapter 16
On the way home Levin asked all details of Kitty's illness and
the Shtcherbatskys' plans, and though he would have been ashamed
to admit it, he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased
that there was still hope, and still more pleased that she should
be suffering who had made him suffer so much. But when Stepan
Arkadyevitch began to speak of the causes of Kitty's illness, and
mentioned Vronsky's name, Levin cut him short.
"I have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell
the truth, no interest in them either."
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the
instantaneous change he knew so well in Levin's face, which had
become as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before.
"Have you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?" asked
Levin.
"Yes, it's settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight
thousand. Eight straight away, and the rest in six years. I've
been bothering about it for ever so long. No one would give
more."
"Then you've as good as given away your forest for nothing," said
Levin gloomily.
"How do you mean for nothing?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch with a
good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in
Levin's eyes now.
"Because the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles
the acre," answered Levin.
"Oh, these farmers!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch playfully. "Your
tone of contempt for us poor townsfolk!... But when it comes to
business, we do it better than anyone. I assure you I have
reckoned it all out," he said, "and the forest is fetching a very
good price--so much so that I'm afraid of this fellow's crying
off, in fact. You know it's not 'timber,'" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince Levin
completely of the unfairness of his doubts. "And it won't run to
more than twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he's giving
me at the rate of seventy roubles the acre."
Levin smiled contemptuously. "I know," he thought, "that fashion
not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice
in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use
them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know
all about it. '_Timber, run to so many yards the acre._' He says
those words without understanding them himself."
"I wouldn't attempt to teach you what you write about in your
office," said he, "and if need arose, I should come to you to ask
about it. But you're so positive you know all the lore of the
forest. It's difficult. Have you counted the trees?"
"How count the trees?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laughing, still
trying to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. "Count the
sands of the sea, number the stars. Some higher power might do
it."
"Oh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single
merchant ever buys a forest without counting the trees, unless
they get it given them for nothing, as you're doing now. I know
your forest. I go there every year shooting, and your forest's
worth a hundred and fifty roubles an acre paid down, while he's
giving you sixty by installments. So that in fact you're making
him a present of thirty thousand."
"Come, don't let your imagination run away with you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch piteously. "Why was it none would give it, then?"
"Why, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he's
bought them off. I've had to do with all of them; I know them.
They're not merchants, you know: they're speculators. He
wouldn't look at a bargain that gave him ten, fifteen per cent
profit, but holds back to buy a rouble's worth for twenty
kopecks."
"Well, enough of it! You're out of temper."
"Not the least," said Levin gloomily, as they drove up to the
house.
At the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and
leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad
collar-straps. In the trap sat the chubby, tightly belted clerk
who served Ryabinin as coachman. Ryabinin himself was already in
the house, and met the friends in the hall. Ryabinin was a tall,
thinnish, middle-aged man, with mustache and a projecting
clean-shaven chin, and prominent muddy-looking eyes. He was
dressed in a long-skirted blue coat, with buttons below the waist
at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the ankles and
straight over the calf, with big galoshes drawn over them. He
rubbed his face with his handkerchief, and wrapping round him his
coat, which sat extremely well as it was, he greeted them with a
smile, holding out his hand to Stepan Arkadyevitch, as though he
wanted to catch something.
"So here you are," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, giving him his hand.
"That's capital."
"I did not venture to disregard your excellency's commands,
though the road was extremely bad. I positively walked the whole
way, but I am here at my time. Konstantin Dmitrievitch, my
respects"; he turned to Levin, trying to seize his hand too. But
Levin, scowling, made as though he did not notice his hand, and
took out the snipe. "Your honors have been diverting yourselves
with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?" added
Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: "a great
delicacy, I suppose." And he shook his head disapprovingly, as
though he had grave doubts whether this game were worth the
candle.
"Would you like to go into my study?" Levin said in French to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, scowling morosely. "Go into my study; you
can talk there."
"Quite so, where you please," said Ryabinin with contemptuous
dignity, as though wishing to make it felt that others might be
in difficulties as to how to behave, but that he could never be
in any difficulty about anything.
On entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as
though seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did
not cross himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and
with the same dubious air with which he had regarded the snipe,
he smiled contemptuously and shook his head disapprovingly, as
though by no means willing to allow that this game were worth the
candle.
"Well, have you brought the money?" asked Oblonsky. "Sit down."
"Oh, don't trouble about the money. I've come to see you to talk
it over."
"What is there to talk over? But do sit down."
"I don't mind if I do," said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning
his elbows on the back of his chair in a position of the
intensest discomfort to himself. "You must knock it down a bit,
prince. It would be too bad. The money is ready conclusively to
the last farthing. As to paying the money down, there'll be no
hitch there."
Levin, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the
cupboard, was just going out of the door, but catching the
merchant's words, he stopped.
"Why, you've got the forest for nothing as it is," he said. "He
came to me too late, or I'd have fixed the price for him."
Ryabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Levin
down and up.
"Very close about money is Konstantin Dmitrievitch," he said with
a smile, turning to Stepan Arkadyevitch; "there's positively no
dealing with him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a
pretty price I offered too."
"Why should I give you my goods for nothing? I didn't pick it up
on the ground, nor steal it either."
"Mercy on us! nowadays there's no chance at all of stealing.
With the open courts and everything done in style, nowadays
there's no question of stealing. We are just talking things over
like gentlemen. His excellency's asking too much for the forest.
I can't make both ends meet over it. I must ask for a little
concession."
"But is the thing settled between you or not? If it's settled,
it's useless haggling; but if it's not," said Levin, "I'll buy
the forest."
The smile vanished at once from Ryabinin's face. A hawklike,
greedy, cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony
fingers he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a shirt, bronze
waistcoat buttons, and a watch chain, and quickly pulled out a
fat old pocketbook.
"Here you are, the forest is mine," he said, crossing himself
quickly, and holding out his hand. "Take the money; it's my
forest. That's Ryabinin's way of doing business; he doesn't
haggle over every half-penny," he added, scowling and waving the
pocketbook.
"I wouldn't be in a hurry if I were you," said Levin.
"Come, really," said Oblonsky in surprise. "I've given my word,
you know."
Levin went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked
towards the door and shook his head with a smile.
"It's all youthfulness--positively nothing but boyishness. Why,
I'm buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory
of it, that Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the
copse of Oblonsky. And as to the profits, why, I must make what
God gives. In God's name. If you would kindly sign the
title-deed..."
Within an hour the merchant, stroking his big overcoat neatly
down, and hooking up his jacket, with the agreement in his
pocket, seated himself in his tightly covered trap, and drove
homewards.
"Ugh, these gentlefolks!" he said to the clerk. "They--they're
a nice lot!"
"That's so," responded the clerk, handing him the reins and
buttoning the leather apron. "But I can congratulate you on the
purchase, Mihail Ignatitch?"
"Well, well..."
Chapter 17
Stepan Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with
notes, which the merchant had paid him for three months in
advance. The business of the forest was over, the money in his
pocket; their shooting had been excellent, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and so he felt
specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon
Levin. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it
had been begun.
Levin certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire
to be affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could
not control his mood. The intoxication of the news that Kitty
was not married had gradually begun to work upon him.
Kitty was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who
had slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him.
Vronsky had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Levin.
Consequently Vronsky had the right to despise Levin, and
therefore he was his enemy. But all this Levin did not think
out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to
him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him, but he
fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid sale
of the forest, the fraud practiced upon Oblonsky and concluded in
his house, exasperated him.
"Well, finished?" he said, meeting Stepan Arkadyevitch upstairs.
"Would you like supper?"
"Well, I wouldn't say no to it. What an appetite I get in the
country! Wonderful! Why didn't you offer Ryabinin something?"
"Oh, damn him!"
"Still, how you do treat him!" said Oblonsky. "You didn't even
shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?"
"Because I don't shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter's a
hundred times better than he is."
"What a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation
of classes?" said Oblonsky.
"Anyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens
me."
"You're a regular reactionist, I see."
"Really, I have never considered what I am. I am Konstantin
Levin, and nothing else."
"And Konstantin Levin very much out of temper," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling.
"Yes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because--excuse
me--of your stupid sale..."
Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels
himself teased and attacked for no fault of his own.
"Come, enough about it!" he said. "When did anybody ever sell
anything without being told immediately after the sale, 'It was
worth much more'? But when one wants to sell, no one will give
anything.... No, I see you've a grudge against that unlucky
Ryabinin."
"Maybe I have. And do you know why? You'll say again that I'm a
reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it
does annoy and anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of
the nobility to which I belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation
of classes, I'm glad to belong. And their impoverishment is not
due to extravagance--that would be nothing; living in good style
--that's the proper thing for noblemen; it's only the nobles who
know how to do it. Now the peasants about us buy land, and I
don't mind that. The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant
works and supplants the idle man. That's as it ought to be. And
I'm very glad for the peasant. But I do mind seeing the process
of impoverishment from a sort of--I don't know what to call it--
innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought for half its value a
magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in Nice. And
there a merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten roubles,
as security for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of
reason, you've made that rascal a present of thirty thousand
roubles."
"Well, what should I have done? Counted every tree?"
"Of course, they must be counted. You didn't count them, but
Ryabinin did. Ryabinin's children will have means of livelihood
and education, while yours maybe will not!"
"Well, you must excuse me, but there's something mean in this
counting. We have our business and they have theirs, and they
must make their profit. Anyway, the thing's done, and there's an
end of it. And here come some poached eggs, my favorite dish.
And Agafea Mihalovna will give us that marvelous herb-brandy..."
Stepan Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with
Agafea Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had
tasted such a dinner and such a supper.
"Well, you do praise it, anyway," said Agafea Mihalovna, "but
Konstantin Dmitrievitch, give him what you will--a crust of
bread--he'll eat it and walk away."
Though Levin tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent.
He wanted to put one question to Stepan Arkadyevitch, but he
could not bring himself to the point, and could not find the
words or the moment in which to put it. Stepan Arkadyevitch had
gone down to his room, undressed, again washed, and attired in a
nightshirt with goffered frills, he had got into bed, but Levin
still lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters,
and not daring to ask what he wanted to know.
"How wonderfully they make this soap," he said gazing at a piece
of soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for
the visitor but Oblonsky had not used. "Only look; why, it's a
work of art."
"Yes, everything's brought to such a pitch of perfection
nowadays," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful
yawn. "The theater, for instance, and the entertainments...
a--a--a!" he yawned. "The electric light everywhere...a--a--a!"
"Yes, the electric light," said Levin. "Yes. Oh, and where's
Vronsky now?" he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.
"Vronsky?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; "he's in
Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he's not once been
in Moscow since. And do you know, Kostya, I'll tell you the
truth," he went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and propping
on his hand his handsome ruddy face, in which his moist,
good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. "It's your own
fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I
told you at the time, I couldn't say which had the better
chance. Why didn't you fight it out? I told you at the time
that...." He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.
"Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did make an offer?" Levin
wondered, gazing at him. "Yes, there's something humbugging,
diplomatic in his face," and feeling he was blushing, he looked
Stepan Arkadyevitch straight in the face without speaking.
"If there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing
but a superficial attraction," pursued Oblonsky. "His being such
a perfect aristocrat, don't you know, and his future position in
society, had an influence not with her, but with her mother."
Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the
heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received.
But he was at home, and the walls of home are a support.
"Stay, stay," he began, interrupting Oblonsky. "You talk of his
being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in,
that aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I
can be looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat,
but I don't. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all
by intrigue, and whose mother--God knows whom she wasn't mixed
up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic,
and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or
four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree
of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that's another
matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended
on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I
know many such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my
forest, while you make Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but
you get rents from your lands and I don't know what, while I
don't and so I prize what's come to me from my ancestors or been
won by hard work.... We are aristocrats, and not those who can
only exist by favor of the powerful of this world, and who can be
bought for twopence halfpenny."
"Well, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you," said
Stepan Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware
that in the class of those who could be bought for twopence
halfpenny Levin was reckoning him too. Levin's warmth gave him
genuine pleasure. "Whom are you attacking? Though a good deal
is not true that you say about Vronsky, but I won't talk about
that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back
with me to Moscow, and..."
"No; I don't know whether you know it or not, but I don't care.
And I tell you--I did make an offer and was rejected, and
Katerina Alexandrovna is nothing now to me but a painful and
humiliating reminiscence."
"What ever for? What nonsense!"
"But we won't talk about it. Please forgive me, if I've been
nasty," said Levin. Now that he had opened his heart, he became
as he had been in the morning. "You're not angry with me, Stiva?
Please don't be angry," he said, and smiling, he took his hand.
"Of course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I'm glad we've
spoken openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is
unusually good--why not go? I couldn't sleep the night anyway,
but I might go straight from shooting to the station."
"Capital."
Chapter 18
Although all Vronsky's inner life was absorbed in his passion,
his external life unalterably and inevitably followed along the
old accustomed lines of his social and regimental ties and
interests. The interests of his regiment took an important place
in Vronsky's life, both because he was fond of the regiment, and
because the regiment was fond of him. They were not only fond of
Vronsky in his regiment, they respected him too, and were proud
of him; proud that this man, with his immense wealth, his
brilliant education and abilities, and the path open before him
to every kind of success, distinction, and ambition, had
disregarded all that, and of all the interests of life had the
interests of his regiment and his comrades nearest to his heart.
Vronsky was aware of his comrades' view of him, and in addition
to his liking for the life, he felt bound to keep up that
reputation.
It need not be said that he did not speak of his love to any of
his comrades, nor did he betray his secret even in the wildest
drinking bouts (though indeed he was never so drunk as to lose
all control of himself). And he shut up any of his thoughtless
comrades who attempted to allude to his connection. But in spite
of that, his love was known to all the town; everyone guessed
with more or less confidence at his relations with Madame
Karenina. The majority of the younger men envied him for just
what was the most irksome factor in his love--the exalted
position of Karenin, and the consequent publicity of their
connection in society.
The greater number of the young women, who envied Anna and had
long been weary of hearing her called _virtuous_, rejoiced at the
fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting for a
decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the
weight of their scorn. They were already making ready their
handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived.
The greater number of the middle-aged people and certain great
personages were displeased at the prospect of the impending
scandal in society.
Vronsky's mother, on hearing of his connection, was at first
pleased at it, because nothing to her mind gave such a finishing
touch to a brilliant young man as a _liaison_ in the highest
society; she was pleased, too, that Madame Karenina, who had so
taken her fancy, and had talked so much of her son, was, after
all, just like all other pretty and well-bred women,--at least
according to the Countess Vronskaya's ideas. But she had heard
of late that her son had refused a position offered him of great
importance to his career, simply in order to remain in the
regiment, where he could be constantly seeing Madame Karenina.
She learned that great personages were displeased with him on
this account, and she changed her opinion. She was vexed, too,
that from all she could learn of this connection it was not that
brilliant, graceful, worldly _liaison_ which she would have
welcomed, but a sort of Wertherish, desperate passion, so she was
told, which might well lead him into imprudence. She had not
seen him since his abrupt departure from Moscow, and she sent her
elder son to bid him come to see her.
This elder son, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He
did not distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or
little, passionate or passionless, lasting or passing (he kept a
ballet girl himself, though he was the father of a family, so he
was lenient in these matters), but he knew that this love affair
was viewed with displeasure by those whom it was necessary to
please, and therefore he did not approve of his brother's
conduct.
Besides the service and society, Vronsky had another great
interest--horses; he was passionately fond of horses.
That year races and a steeplechase had been arranged for the
officers. Vronsky had put his name down, bought a thoroughbred
English mare, and in spite of his love affair, he was looking
forward to the races with intense, though reserved, excitement...
These two passions did not interfere with one another. On the
contrary, he needed occupation and distraction quite apart from
his love, so as to recruit and rest himself from the violent
emotions that agitated him.
Chapter 19
On the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky had come earlier
than usual to eat beefsteak in the common messroom of the
regiment. He had no need to be strict with himself, as he had
very quickly been brought down to the required light weight; but
still he had to avoid gaining flesh, and so he eschewed
farinaceous and sweet dishes. He sat with his coat unbuttoned
over a white waistcoat, resting both elbows on the table, and
while waiting for the steak he had ordered he looked at a French
novel that lay open on his plate. He was only looking at the
book to avoid conversation with the officers coming in and out;
he was thinking.
He was thinking of Anna's promise to see him that day after the
races. But he had not seen her for three days, and as her
husband had just returned from abroad, he did not know whether
she would be able to meet him today or not, and he did not know
how to find out. He had had his last interview with her at his
cousin Betsy's summer villa. He visited the Karenins' summer
villa as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go there, and he
pondered the question how to do it.
"Of course I shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether she's
coming to the races. Of course, I'll go," he decided, lifting
his head from the book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness
of seeing her, his face lighted up.
"Send to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and
three horses as quick as they can," he said to the servant, who
handed him the steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up
he began eating.
From the billiard room next door came the sound of balls
knocking, of talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the
entrance-door: one, a young fellow, with a feeble, delicate
face, who had lately joined the regiment from the Corps of Pages;
the other, a plump, elderly officer, with a bracelet on his
wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat.
Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as
though he had not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at
the same time.
"What? Fortifying yourself for your work?" said the plump
officer, sitting down beside him.
"As you see," responded Vronsky, knitting his brows, wiping his
mouth, and not looking at the officer.
"So you're not afraid of getting fat?" said the latter, turning a
chair round for the young officer.
"What?" said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of disgust, and
showing his even teeth.
"You're not afraid of getting fat?"
"Waiter, sherry!" said Vronsky, without replying, and moving the
book to the other side of him, he went on reading.
The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the
young officer.
"You choose what we're to drink," he said, handing him the card,
and looking at him.
"Rhine wine, please," said the young officer, stealing a timid
glance at Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely visible
mustache. Seeing that Vronsky did not turn round, the young
officer got up.
"Let's go into the billiard room," he said.
The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved towards the
door.
At that moment there walked into the room the tall and well-built
Captain Yashvin. Nodding with an air of lofty contempt to the
two officers, he went up to Vronsky.
"Ah! here he is!" he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on
his epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but his face lighted
up immediately with his characteristic expression of genial and
manly serenity.
"That's it, Alexey," said the captain, in his loud baritone.
"You must just eat a mouthful, now, and drink only one tiny
glass."
"Oh, I'm not hungry."
"There go the inseparables," Yashvin dropped, glancing
sarcastically at the two officers who were at that instant
leaving the room. And he bent his long legs, swathed in tight
riding breeches, and sat down in the chair, too low for him, so
that his knees were cramped up in a sharp angle.
"Why didn't you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday? Numerova
wasn't at all bad. Where were you?"
"I was late at the Tverskoys'," said Vronsky.
"Ah!" responded Yashvin.
Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral
principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky's
greatest friend in the regiment. Vronsky liked him both for his
exceptional physical strength, which he showed for the most part
by being able to drink like a fish, and do without sleep without
being in the slightest degree affected by it; and for his great
strength of character, which he showed in his relations with his
comrades and superior officers, commanding both fear and respect,
and also at cards, when he would play for tens of thousands and
however much he might have drunk, always with such skill and
decision that he was reckoned the best player in the English
Club. Vronsky respected and liked Yashvin particularly because
he felt Yashvin liked him, not for his name and his money, but
for himself. And of all men he was the only one with whom
Vronsky would have liked to speak of his love. He felt that
Yashvin, in spite of his apparent contempt for every sort of
feeling, was the only man who could, so he fancied, comprehend
the intense passion which now filled his whole life. Moreover,
he felt certain that Yashvin, as it was, took no delight in
gossip and scandal, and interpreted his feeling rightly, that is
to say, knew and believed that this passion was not a jest, not a
pastime, but something more serious and important.
Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware
that he knew all about it, and that he put the right
interpretation on it, and he was glad to see that in his eyes.
"Ah! yes," he said, to the announcement that Vronsky had been at
the Tverskoys'; and his black eyes shining, he plucked at his
left mustache, and began twisting it into his mouth, a bad habit
he had.
"Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?" asked
Vronsky.
"Eight thousand. But three don't count; he won't pay up."
"Oh, then you can afford to lose over me," said Vronsky,
laughing. (Yashvin had bet heavily on Vronsky in the races.)
"No chance of my losing. Mahotin's the only one that's risky."
And the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming race, the
only thing Vronsky could think of just now.
"Come along, I've finished," said Vronsky, and getting up he went
to the door. Yashvin got up too, stretching his long legs and
his long back.
"It's too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink. I'll
come along directly. Hi, wine!" he shouted, in his rich voice,
that always rang out so loudly at drill, and set the windows
shaking now.
"No, all right," he shouted again immediately after. "You're
going home, so I'll go with you."
And he walked out with Vronsky.
Chapter 20
Vronsky was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut, divided into
two by a partition. Petritsky lived with him in camp too.
Petritsky was asleep when Vronsky and Yashvin came into the hut.
"Get up, don't go on sleeping," said Yashvin, going behind the
partition and giving Petritsky, who was lying with ruffled hair
and with his nose in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.
Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked round.
"Your brother's been here," he said to Vronsky. "He waked me up,
damn him, and said he'd look in again." And pulling up the rug
he flung himself back on the pillow. "Oh, do shut up, Yashvin!"
he said, getting furious with Yashvin, who was pulling the rug
off him. "Shut up!" He turned over and opened his eyes. "You'd
better tell me what to drink; such a nasty taste in my mouth,
that..."
"Brandy's better than anything," boomed Yashvin. "Tereshtchenko!
brandy for your master and cucumbers," he shouted, obviously
taking pleasure in the sound of his own voice.
"Brandy, do you think? Eh?" queried Petritsky, blinking and
rubbing his eyes. "And you'll drink something? All right then,
we'll have a drink together! Vronsky, have a drink?" said
Petritsky, getting up and wrapping the tiger-skin rug round him.
He went to the door of the partition wall, raised his hands, and
hummed in French, "There was a king in Thule." "Vronsky, will
you have a drink?"
"Go along," said Vronsky, putting on the coat his valet handed to
him.
"Where are you off to?" asked Yashvin. "Oh, here are your three
horses," he added, seeing the carriage drive up.
"To the stables, and I've got to see Bryansky, too, about the
horses," said Vronsky.
Vronsky had as a fact promised to call at Bryansky's, some eight
miles from Peterhof, and to bring him some money owing for some
horses; and he hoped to have time to get that in too. But his
comrades were at once aware that he was not only going there.
Petritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with his lips,
as though he would say: "Oh, yes, we know your Bryansky."
"Mind you're not late!" was Yashvin's only comment; and to change
the conversation: "How's my roan? is he doing all right?" he
inquired, looking out of the window at the middle one of the
three horses, which he had sold Vronsky.
"Stop!" cried Petritsky to Vronsky as he was just going out.
"Your brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a bit;
where are they?"
Vronsky stopped.
"Well, where are they?"
"Where are they? That's just the question!" said Petritsky
solemnly, moving his forefinger upwards from his nose.
"Come, tell me; this is silly!" said Vronsky smiling.
"I have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about."
"Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?"
"No, I've forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait
a bit! But what's the use of getting in a rage. If you'd drunk
four bottles yesterday as I did you'd forget where you were
lying. Wait a bit, I'll remember!"
Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.
"Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was
standing. Yes--yes--yes.... Here it is!"--and Petritsky pulled
a letter out from under the mattress, where he had hidden it.
Vronsky took the letter and his brother's note. It was the
letter he was expecting--from his mother, reproaching him for
not having been to see her--and the note was from his brother to
say that he must have a little talk with him. Vronsky knew that
it was all about the same thing. "What business is it of
theirs!" thought Vronsky, and crumpling up the letters he thrust
them between the buttons of his coat so as to read them carefully
on the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by two officers;
one of his regiment and one of another.
Vronsky's quarters were always a meeting place for all the
officers.
"Where are you off to?"
"I must go to Peterhof."
"Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?"
"Yes, but I've not seen her yet."
"They say Mahotin's Gladiator's lame."
"Nonsense! But however are you going to race in this mud?" said
the other.
"Here are my saviors!" cried Petritsky, seeing them come in.
Before him stood the orderly with a tray of brandy and salted
cucumbers. "Here's Yashvin ordering me to drink a pick-me-up."
"Well, you did give it to us yesterday," said one of those who
had come in; "you didn't let us get a wink of sleep all night."
"Oh, didn't we make a pretty finish!" said Petritsky. "Volkov
climbed onto the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I
said: 'Let's have music, the funeral march!' He fairly dropped
asleep on the roof over the funeral march."
"Drink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and then
seltzer water and a lot of lemon," said Yashvin, standing over
Petritsky like a mother making a child take medicine, "and then a
little champagne--just a small bottle."
"Come, there's some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky. We'll
all have a drink."
"No; good-bye all of you. I'm not going to drink today."
"Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it
alone. Give us the seltzer water and lemon."
"Vronsky!" shouted someone when he was already outside.
"Well?"
"You'd better get your hair cut, it'll weigh you down, especially
at the top."
Vronsky was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a little bald.
He laughed gaily, showing his even teeth, and pulling his cap over
the thin place, went out and got into his carriage.
"To the stables!" he said, and was just pulling out the letters
to read them through, but he thought better of it, and put off
reading them so as not to distract his attention before looking
at the mare. "Later!"
Chapter 21
The temporary stable, a wooden shed, had been put up close to the
race course, and there his mare was to have been taken the
previous day. He had not yet seen her there.
During the last few days he had not ridden her out for exercise
himself, but had put her in the charge of the trainer, and so now
he positively did not know in what condition his mare had arrived
yesterday and was today. He had scarcely got out of his carriage
when his groom, the so-called "stable boy," recognizing the
carriage some way off, called the trainer. A dry-looking
Englishman, in high boots and a short jacket, clean-shaven,
except for a tuft below his chin, came to meet him, walking with
the uncouth gait of jockey, turning his elbows out and swaying
from side to side.
"Well, how's Frou-Frou?" Vronsky asked in English.
"All right, sir," the Englishman's voice responded somewhere in
the inside of his throat. "Better not go in," he added, touching
his hat. "I've put a muzzle on her, and the mare's fidgety.
Better not go in, it'll excite the mare."
"No, I'm going in. I want to look at her."
"Come along, then," said the Englishman, frowning, and speaking
with his mouth shut, and, with swinging elbows, he went on in
front with his disjointed gait.
They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable
boy, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a
broom in his hand, and followed them. In the shed there were
five horses in their separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his
chief rival, Gladiator, a very tall chestnut horse, had been
brought there, and must be standing among them. Even more than
his mare, Vronsky longed to see Gladiator, whom he had never
seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of the race course it
was not merely impossible for him to see the horse, but improper
even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing along
the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box on
the left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse
with white legs. He knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the
feeling of a man turning away from the sight of another man's
open letter, he turned round and went into Frou-Frou's stall.
"The horse is here belonging to Mak...Mak...I never can say the
name," said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big
finger and dirty nail towards Gladiator's stall.
"Mahotin? Yes, he's my most serious rival," said Vronsky.
"If you were riding him," said the Englishman, "I'd bet on you."
"Frou-Frou's more nervous; he's stronger," said Vronsky, smiling
at the compliment to his riding.
"In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck," said
the Englishman.
Of pluck--that is, energy and courage--Vronsky did not merely
feel that he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was
firmly convinced that no one in the world could have more of this
"pluck" than he had.
"Don't you think I want more thinning down?"
"Oh, no," answered the Englishman. "Please, don't speak loud.
The mare's fidgety," he added, nodding towards the horse-box,
before which they were standing, and from which came the sound of
restless stamping in the straw.
He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horse-box, dimly
lighted by one little window. In the horse-box stood a dark bay
mare, with a muzzle on, picking at the fresh straw with her
hoofs. Looking round him in the twilight of the horse-box,
Vronsky unconsciously took in once more in a comprehensive glance
all the points of his favorite mare. Frou-Frou was a beast of
medium size, not altogether free from reproach, from a
breeder's point of view. She was small-boned all over; though
her chest was extremely prominent in front, it was narrow. Her
hind-quarters were a little drooping, and in her fore-legs, and
still more in her hind-legs, there was a noticeable curvature.
The muscles of both hind- and fore-legs were not very thick; but
across her shoulders the mare was exceptionally broad, a
peculiarity specially striking now that she was lean from
training. The bones of her legs below the knees looked no
thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily
thick seen from the side. She looked altogether, except across
the shoulders, as it were, pinched in at the sides and pressed
out in depth. But she had in the highest degree the quality that
makes all defects forgotten: that quality was _blood_, the blood
_that tells_, as the English expression has it. The muscles stood
up sharply under the network of sinews, covered with the
delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they were hard as bone.
Her clean-cut head, with prominent, bright, spirited eyes,
broadened out at the open nostrils, that showed the red blood in
the cartilage within. About all her figure, and especially her
head, there was a certain expression of energy, and, at the same
time, of softness. She was one of those creatures which seem
only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not
allow them to.
To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he
felt at that moment, looking at her.
Directly Vronsky went towards her, she drew in a deep breath,
and, turning back her prominent eye till the white looked
bloodshot, she started at the approaching figures from the
opposite side, shaking her muzzle, and shifting lightly from one
leg to the other.
"There, you see how fidgety she is," said the Englishman.
"There, darling! There!" said Vronsky, going up to the mare and
speaking soothingly to her.
But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he
stood by her head, she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles
quivered under her soft, delicate coat. Vronsky patted her
strong neck, straightened over her sharp withers a stray lock of
her mane that had fallen on the other side, and moved his face
near her dilated nostrils, transparent as a bat's wing. She drew
a loud breath and snorted out through her tense nostrils,
started, pricked up her sharp ear, and put out her strong, black
lip towards Vronsky, as though she would nip hold of his sleeve.
But remembering the muzzle, she shook it and again began
restlessly stamping one after the other her shapely legs.
"Quiet, darling, quiet!" he said, patting her again over her
hind-quarters; and with a glad sense that his mare was in the
best possible condition, he went out of the horse-box.
The mare's excitement had infected Vronsky. He felt that his
heart was throbbing, and that he, too, like the mare, longed to
move, to bite; it was both dreadful and delicious.
"Well, I rely on you, then," he said to the Englishman;
"half-past six on the ground."
"All right," said the Englishman. "Oh, where are you going, my
lord?" he asked suddenly, using the title "my lord," which he had
scarcely ever used before.
Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew how
to stare, not into the Englishman's eyes, but at his forehead,
astounded at the impertinence of his question. But realizing
that in asking this the Englishman had been looking at him not as
an employer, but as a jockey, he answered:
"I've got to go to Bryansky's; I shall be home within an hour."
"How often I'm asked that question today!" he said to himself,
and he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The
Englishman looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew
where Vronsky was going, he added:
"The great thing's to keep quiet before a race," said he; "don't
get out of temper or upset about anything."
"All right," answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping into his
carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.
Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had
been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy
downpour of rain.
"What a pity!" thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of the
carriage. "It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp."
As he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his
mother's letter and his brother's note, and read them through.
Yes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his
mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the
affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling
of angry hatred--a feeling he had rarely known before. "What
business is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to
concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just
because they see that this is something they can't understand.
If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have
left me alone. They feel that this is something different, that
this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than
life. And this is incomprehensible, and that's why it annoys
them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it
ourselves, and we do not complain of it," he said, in the word
_we_ linking himself with Anna. "No, they must needs teach us
how to live. They haven't an idea of what happiness is; they
don't know that without our love, for us there is neither
happiness nor unhappiness--no life at all," he thought.
He was angry with all of them for their interference just because
he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He
felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary
impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving
no other traces in the life of either but pleasant or unpleasant
memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position,
all the difficulty there was for them, conspicuous as they were
in the eye of all the world, in concealing their love, in lying
and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and continually
thinking of others, when the passion that united them was so
intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but
their love.
He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of
inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against
his natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the shame he
had more than once detected in her at this necessity for lying
and deceit. And he experienced the strange feeling that had
sometimes come upon him since his secret love for Anna. This was
a feeling of loathing for something--whether for Alexey
Alexandrovitch, or for himself, or for the whole world, he could
not have said. But he always drove away this strange feeling.
Now, too, he shook it off and continued the thread of his
thoughts.
"Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she
cannot be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she
does not show it. Yes, we must put an end to it," he decided.
And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it
was essential to put an end to this false position, and the
sooner the better. "Throw up everything, she and I, and hide
ourselves somewhere alone with our love," he said to himself.
Chapter 22
The rain did not last long, and by the time Vronsky arrived, his
shaft-horse trotting at full speed and dragging the trace-horses
galloping through the mud, with their reins hanging loose, the
sun had peeped out again, the roofs of the summer villas and the
old limetrees in the gardens on both sides of the principal
streets sparkled with wet brilliance, and from the twigs came a
pleasant drip and from the roofs rushing streams of water. He
thought no more of the shower spoiling the race course, but was
rejoicing now that--thanks to the rain--he would be sure to
find her at home and alone, as he knew that Alexey
Alexandrovitch, who had lately returned from a foreign watering
place, had not moved from Petersburg.
Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he always did, to
avoid attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and
walked to the house. He did not go up the steps to the street
door, but went into the court.
"Has your master come?" he asked a gardener.
"No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to
the front door; there are servants there," the gardener answered.
"They'll open the door."
"No, I'll go in from the garden."
And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her
by surprise, since he had not promised to be there today, and she
would certainly not expect him to come before the races, he
walked, holding his sword and stepping cautiously over the sandy
path, bordered with flowers, to the terrace that looked out upon
the garden. Vronsky forgot now all that he had thought on the
way of the hardships and difficulties of their position. He
thought of nothing but that he would see her directly, not in
imagination, but living, all of her, as she was in reality. He
was just going in, stepping on his whole foot so as not to creak,
up the worn steps of the terrace, when he suddenly remembered
what he always forgot, and what caused the most torturing side of
his relations with her, her son with his questioning--hostile,
as he fancied--eyes.
This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their
freedom. When he was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not
merely avoid speaking of anything that they could not have
repeated before everyone; they did not even allow themselves to
refer by hints to anything the boy did not understand. They had
made no agreement about this, it had settled itself. They would
have felt it wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his
presence they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of this
caution, Vronsky often saw the child's intent, bewildered glance
fixed upon him, and a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one time
friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the boy's
manner to him; as though the child felt that between this man and
his mother there existed some important bond, the significance of
which he could not understand.
As a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand this
relation, and he tried painfully, and was not able to make clear
to himself what feeling he ought to have for this man. With a
child's keen instinct for every manifestation of feeling, he saw
distinctly that his father, his governess, his nurse,--all did
not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on him with horror and
aversion, though they never said anything about him, while his
mother looked on him as her greatest friend.
"What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I
don't know, it's my fault; either I'm stupid or a naughty boy,"
thought the child. And this was what caused his dubious,
inquiring, sometimes hostile, expression, and the shyness and
uncertainty which Vronsky found so irksome. This child's
presence always and infallibly called up in Vronsky that strange
feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of
late. This child's presence called up both in Vronsky and in
Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the
compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far
from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his
power, that every instant is carrying him further and further
away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right
direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.
This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass
that showed them the point to which they had departed from what
they knew, but did not want to know.
This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was completely alone.
She was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son,
who had gone out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She
had sent a manservant and a maid out to look for him. Dressed
in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner
of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him.
Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a
cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely
hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The
beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck
Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood
still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have
made a step to come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence,
pushed away the watering pot, and turned her flushed face towards
him.
"What's the matter? You are ill?" he said to her in French,
going up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that
there might be spectators, he looked round towards the balcony
door, and reddened a little, as he always reddened, feeling that
he had to be afraid and be on his guard.
"No, I'm quite well," she said, getting up and pressing his
outstretched hand tightly. "I did not expect...thee."
"Mercy! what cold hands!" he said.
"You startled me," she said. "I'm alone, and expecting
Seryozha; he's out for a walk; they'll come in from this side."
But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.
"Forgive me for coming, but I couldn't pass the day without
seeing you," he went on, speaking French, as he always did to
avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid
between them, and the dangerously intimate singular.
"Forgive you? I'm so glad!"
"But you're ill or worried," he went on, not letting go her hands
and bending over her. "What were you thinking of?"
"Always the same thing," she said, with a smile.
She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked
what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the
same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was
thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why was it, she
wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret
connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was
such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from
certain other considerations. She asked him about the races. He
answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying
to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the
details of his preparations for the races.
"Tell him or not tell him?" she thought, looking into his quiet,
affectionate eyes. "He is so happy, so absorbed in his races
that he won't understand as he ought, he won't understand all the
gravity of this fact to us."
"But you haven't told me what you were thinking of when I came
in," he said, interrupting his narrative; "please tell me!"
She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked
inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under
their long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she
had picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter
subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win
her.
"I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace,
knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God's
sake," he repeated imploringly.
"Yes, I shan't be able to forgive him if he does not realize all
the gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?"
she thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling
the hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more.
"For God's sake!" he repeated, taking her hand.
"Shall I tell you?"
"Yes, yes, yes . . ."
"I'm with child," she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in
her hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off
him, watching how he would take it. He turned white, would have
said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head
sank on his breast. "Yes, he realizes all the gravity of it,"
she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand.
But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the
fact as she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come
upon him with tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing
of someone. But at the same time, he felt that the turning-point
he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to
go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable
in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their
unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically
affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of
submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence,
paced up and down the terrace.
"Yes," he said, going up to her resolutely. "Neither you nor I
have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our
fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end"--he
looked round as he spoke--"to the deception in which we are
living."
"Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?" she said softly.
She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.
"Leave your husband and make our life one."
"It is one as it is," she answered, scarcely audibly.
"Yes, but altogether; altogether."
"But how, Alexey, tell me how?" she said in melancholy mockery at
the hopelessness of her own position. "Is there any way out of
such a position? Am I not the wife of my husband?"
"There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,"
he said. "Anything's better than the position in which you're
living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over
everything--the world and your son and your husband."
"Oh, not over my husband," she said, with a quiet smile. "I
don't know him, I don't think of him. He doesn't exist."
"You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him
too."
"Oh, he doesn't even know," she said, and suddenly a hot flush
came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and
tears of shame came into her eyes. "But we won't talk of him."
Chapter 23
Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as
now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every
time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and
triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though
there were something in this which she could not or would not
face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the
real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange
and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom
he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was
resolved to have it out.
"Whether he knows or not," said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and
resolute tone, "that's nothing to do with us. We cannot...you
cannot stay like this, especially now."
"What's to be done, according to you?" she asked with the same
frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her
condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it
the necessity of taking some step.
"Tell him everything, and leave him."
"Very well, let us suppose I do that," she said. "Do you know
what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all
beforehand," and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had
been so soft a minute before. "'Eh, you love another man, and
have entered into criminal intrigues with him?'" (Mimicking her
husband, she threw an emphasis on the word "criminal," as Alexey
Alexandrovitch did.) "'I warned you of the results in the
religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not
listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,--'"
"and my son," she had meant to say, but about her son she could
not jest,--"'disgrace my name, and'--and more in the same
style," she added. "In general terms, he'll say in his official
manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot
let me go, but will take all measures in his power to prevent
scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance
with his words. That's what will happen. He's not a man, but a
machine, and a spiteful machine when he's angry," she added,
recalling Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the
peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning
against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing
for the great wrong she herself was doing him.
"But, Anna," said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying
to soothe her, "we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be
guided by the line he takes."
"What, run away?"
"And why not run away? I don't see how we can keep on like this.
And not for my sake--I see that you suffer."
"Yes, run away, and become your mistress," she said angrily.
"Anna," he said, with reproachful tenderness.
"Yes," she went on, "become your mistress, and complete the ruin
of..."
Again she would have said "my son," but she could not utter that
word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and
truthful nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long
to get out of it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of
it was the word--_son_, which she could not bring herself to
pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his future attitude
to his mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such terror
at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a
woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances
that everything would remain as it always had been, and that it
was possible to forget the fearful question of how it would be
with her son.
"I beg you, I entreat you," she said suddenly, taking his hand,
and speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender,
"never speak to me of that!"
"But, Anna..."
"Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror
of my position; but it's not so easy to arrange as you think.
And leave it to me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it.
Do you promise me?...No, no, promise!..."
"I promise everything, but I can't be at peace, especially after
what you have told me. I can't be at peace, when you can't be at
peace...."
"I?" she repeated. "Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will
pass, if you will never talk about this. When you talk about
it--it's only then it worries me."
"I don't understand," he said.
"I know," she interrupted him, "how hard it is for your truthful
nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have
ruined your whole life for me."
"I was just thinking the very same thing," he said; "how could
you sacrifice everything for my sake? I can't forgive myself
that you're unhappy!"
"I unhappy?" she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him
with an ecstatic smile of love. "I am like a hungry man who has
been given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and
ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my
unhappiness...."
She could hear the sound of her son's voice coming towards them,
and glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively.
Her eyes glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid
movement she raised her lovely hands, covered with rings, took
his head, looked a long look into his face, and, putting up her
face with smiling, parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth and both
eyes, and pushed him away. She would have gone, but he held her
back.
"When?" he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.
"Tonight, at one o'clock," she whispered, and, with a heavy
sigh, she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.
Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he
and his nurse had taken shelter in an arbor.
"Well, _au revoir_," she said to Vronsky. "I must soon be getting
ready for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me."
Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.
Chapter 24
When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins' balcony, he was
so greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the
figures on the watch's face, but could not take in what time it
was. He came out on to the high road and walked, picking his way
carefully through the mud, to his carriage. He was so completely
absorbed in his feeling for Anna, that he did not even think what
o'clock it was, and whether he had time to go to Bryansky's. He
had left him, as often happens, only the external faculty of
memory, that points out each step one has to take, one after the
other. He went up to his coachman, who was dozing on the box in
the shadow, already lengthening, of a thick limetree; he admired
the shifting clouds of midges circling over the hot horses, and,
waking the coachman, he jumped into the carriage, and told him to
drive to Bryansky's. It was only after driving nearly five miles
that he had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch,
and realize that it was half-past five, and he was late.
There were several races fixed for that day: the Mounted Guards'
race, then the officers' mile-and-a-half race, then the
three-mile race, and then the race for which he was entered. He
could still be in time for his race, but if he went to Bryansky's
he could only just be in time, and he would arrive when the whole
of the court would be in their places. That would be a pity.
But he had promised Bryansky to come, and so he decided to drive
on, telling the coachman not to spare the horses.
He reached Bryansky's, spent five minutes there, and galloped
back. This rapid drive calmed him. All that was painful in his
relations with Anna, all the feeling of indefiniteness left by
their conversation, had slipped out of his mind. He was thinking
now with pleasure and excitement of the race, of his being
anyhow, in time, and now and then the thought of the blissful
interview awaiting him that night flashed across his imagination
like a flaming light.
The excitement of the approaching race gained upon him as he
drove further and further into the atmosphere of the races,
overtaking carriages driving up from the summer villas or out of
Petersburg.
At his quarters no one was left at home; all were at the races,
and his valet was looking out for him at the gate. While he was
changing his clothes, his valet told him that the second race had
begun already, that a lot of gentlemen had been to ask for him,
and a boy had twice run up from the stables. Dressing without
hurry (he never hurried himself, and never lost his
self-possession), Vronsky drove to the sheds. From the sheds he
could see a perfect sea of carriages, and people on foot,
soldiers surrounding the race course, and pavilions swarming with
people. The second race was apparently going on, for just as he
went into the sheds he heard a bell ringing. Going towards the
stable, he met the white-legged chestnut, Mahotin's Gladiator,
being led to the race-course in a blue forage horsecloth, with
what looked like huge ears edged with blue.
"Where's Cord?" he asked the stable-boy.
"In the stable, putting on the saddle."
In the open horse-box stood Frou-Frou, saddled ready. They were
just going to lead her out.
"I'm not too late?"
"All right! All right!" said the Englishman; "don't upset
yourself!"
Vronsky once more took in in one glance the exquisite lines of
his favorite mare; who was quivering all over, and with an effort
he tore himself from the sight of her, and went out of the
stable. He went towards the pavilions at the most favorable
moment for escaping attention. The mile-and-a-half race was just
finishing, and all eyes were fixed on the horse-guard in front
and the light hussar behind, urging their horses on with a last
effort close to the winning post. From the center and outside of
the ring all were crowding to the winning post, and a group of
soldiers and officers of the horse-guards were shouting loudly
their delight at the expected triumph of their officer and
comrade. Vronsky moved into the middle of the crowd unnoticed,
almost at the very moment when the bell rang at the finish of the
race, and the tall, mudspattered horse-guard who came in first,
bending over the saddle, let go the reins of his panting gray
horse that looked dark with sweat.
The horse, stiffening out its legs, with an effort stopped its
rapid course, and the officer of the horse-guards looked round
him like a man waking up from a heavy sleep, and just managed to
smile. A crowd of friends and outsiders pressed round him.
Vronsky intentionally avoided that select crowd of the upper
world, which was moving and talking with discreet freedom before
the pavilions. He knew that Madame Karenina was there, and
Betsy, and his brother's wife, and he purposely did not go near
them for fear of something distracting his attention. But he was
continually met and stopped by acquaintances, who told him about
the previous races, and kept asking him why he was so late.
At the time when the racers had to go to the pavilion to receive
the prizes, and all attention was directed to that point,
Vronsky's elder brother, Alexander, a colonel with heavy fringed
epaulets, came up to him. He was not tall, though as broadly
built as Alexey, and handsomer and rosier than he; he had a red
nose, and an open, drunken-looking face.
"Did you get my note?" he said. "There's never any finding you."
Alexander Vronsky, in spite of the dissolute life, and in
especial the drunken habits, for which he was notorious, was
quite one of the court circle.
Now, as he talked to his brother of a matter bound to be
exceedingly disagreeable to him, knowing that the eyes of many
people might be fixed upon him, he kept a smiling countenance, as
though he were jesting with his brother about something of little
moment.
"I got it, and I really can't make out what _you_ are worrying
yourself about," said Alexey.
"I'm worrying myself because the remark has just been made to me
that you weren't here, and that you were seen in Peterhof on
Monday."
"There are matters which only concern those directly interested
in them, and the matter you are so worried about is..."
"Yes, but if so, you may as well cut the service...."
"I beg you not to meddle, and that's all I have to say."
Alexey Vronsky's frowning face turned white, and his prominent
lower jaw quivered, which happened rarely with him. Being a man
of very warm heart, he was seldom angry; but when he was angry,
and when his chin quivered, then, as Alexander Vronsky knew, he
was dangerous. Alexander Vronsky smiled gaily.
"I only wanted to give you Mother's letter. Answer it, and don't
worry about anything just before the race. Bonne chance," he
added, smiling and he moved away from him. But after him another
friendly greeting brought Vronsky to a standstill.
"So you won't recognize your friends! How are you, mon cher?"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, as conspicuously brilliant in the midst
of all the Petersburg brilliance as he was in Moscow, his face
rosy, and his whiskers sleek and glossy. "I came up yesterday,
and I'm delighted that I shall see your triumph. When shall we
meet?"
"Come tomorrow to the messroom," said Vronsky, and squeezing
him by the sleeve of his coat, with apologies, he moved away to
the center of the race course, where the horses were being led
for the great steeplechase.
The horses who had run in the last race were being led home,
steaming and exhausted, by the stable-boys, and one after another
the fresh horses for the coming race made their appearance, for
the most part English racers, wearing horsecloths, and looking
with their drawn-up bellies like strange, huge birds. On the
right was led in Frou-Frou, lean and beautiful, lifting up her
elastic, rather long pasterns, as though moved by springs. Not
far from her they were taking the rug off the lop-eared
Gladiator. The strong, exquisite, perfectly correct lines of the
stallion, with his superb hind-quarters and excessively short
pasterns almost over his hoofs, attracted Vronsky's attention in
spite of himself. He would have gone up to his mare, but he was
again detained by an acquaintance.
"Oh, there's Karenin!" said the acquaintance with whom he was
chatting. "He's looking for his wife, and she's in the middle of
the pavilion. Didn't you see her?"
"No," answered Vronsky, and without even glancing round towards
the pavilion where his friend was pointing out Madame Karenina,
he went up to his mare.
Vronsky had not had time to look at the saddle, about which he
had to give some direction, when the competitors were summoned to
the pavilion to receive their numbers and places in the row at
starting. Seventeen officers, looking serious and severe, many
with pale faces, met together in the pavilion and drew the
numbers. Vronsky drew the number seven. The cry was heard:
"Mount!"
Feeling that with the others riding in the race, he was the
center upon which all eyes were fastened, Vronsky walked up to
his mare in that state of nervous tension in which he usually
became deliberate and composed in his movements. Cord, in honor
of the races, had put on his best clothes, a black coat buttoned
up, a stiffly starched collar, which propped up his cheeks, a
round black hat, and top boots. He was calm and dignified as
ever, and was with his own hands holding Frou-Frou by both reins,
standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou was still trembling
as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced sideways at
Vronsky. Vronsky slipped his finger under the saddle-girth. The
mare glanced aslant at him, drew up her lip, and twitched her
ear. The Englishman puckered up his lips, intending to indicate
a smile that anyone should verify his saddling.
"Get up; you won't feel so excited."
Vronsky looked round for the last time at his rivals. He knew
that he would not see them during the race. Two were already
riding forward to the point from which they were to start.
Galtsin, a friend of Vronsky's and one of his more formidable
rivals, was moving round a bay horse that would not let him
mount. A little light hussar in tight riding breeches rode off
at a gallop, crouched up like a cat on the saddle, in imitation
of English jockeys. Prince Kuzovlev sat with a white face on his
thoroughbred mare from the Grabovsky stud, while an English groom
led her by the bridle. Vronsky and all his comrades knew
Kuzovlev and his peculiarity of "weak nerves" and terrible
vanity. They knew that he was afraid of everything, afraid of
riding a spirited horse. But now, just because it was terrible,
because people broke their necks, and there was a doctor standing
at each obstacle, and an ambulance with a cross on it, and a
sister of mercy, he had made up his mind to take part in the
race. Their eyes met, and Vronsky gave him a friendly and
encouraging nod. Only one he did not see, his chief rival,
Mahotin on Gladiator.
"Don't be in a hurry," said Cord to Vronsky, "and remember one
thing: don't hold her in at the fences, and don't urge her on;
let her go as she likes."
"All right, all right," said Vronsky, taking the reins.
"If you can, lead the race; but don't lose heart till the last
minute, even if you're behind."
Before the mare had time to move, Vronsky stepped with an agile,
vigorous movement into the steel-toothed stirrup, and lightly and
firmly seated himself on the creaking leather of the saddle.
Getting his right foot in the stirrup, he smoothed the double
reins, as he always did, between his fingers, and Cord let go.
As though she did not know which foot to put first, Frou-Frou
started, dragging at the reins with her long neck, and as though
she were on springs, shaking her rider from side to side. Cord
quickened his step, following him. The excited mare, trying to
shake off her rider first on one side and then the other, pulled
at the reins, and Vronsky tried in vain with voice and hand to
soothe her.
They were just reaching the dammed-up stream on their way to the
starting point. Several of the riders were in front and several
behind, when suddenly Vronsky heard the sound of a horse
galloping in the mud behind him, and he was overtaken by Mahotin
on his white-legged, lop-eared Gladiator. Mahotin smiled,
showing his long teeth, but Vronsky looked angrily at him. He
did not like him, and regarded him now as his most formidable
rival. He was angry with him for galloping past and exciting his
mare. Frou-Frou started into a gallop, her left foot forward,
made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened reins, passed into
a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down. Cord, too,
scowled, and followed Vronsky almost at a trot.
Chapter 25
There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The
race course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse
in front of the pavilion. On this course nine obstacles had been
arranged: the stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high,
just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a
precipitous slope, an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult
obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with brushwood, beyond
which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the horse
had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two more
ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and the end of the
race was just facing the pavilion. But the race began not in the
ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the
course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in
breadth, which the racers could leap or wade through as they
preferred.
Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some
horse thrust itself out of line, and they had to begin again.
The umpire who was starting them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning
to lose his temper, when at last for the fourth time he shouted
"Away!" and the racers started.
Every eye, every opera glass, was turned on the brightly colored
group of riders at the moment they were in line to start.
"They're off! They're starting!" was heard on all sides after
the hush of expectation.
And little groups and solitary figures among the public began
running from place to place to get a better view. In the very
first minute the close group of horsemen drew out, and it could
be seen that they were approaching the stream in twos and
threes and one behind another. To the spectators it seemed as
though they had all started simultaneously, but to the racers
there were seconds of difference that had great value to them.
Frou-Frou, excited and over-nervous, had lost the first moment,
and several horses had started before her, but before reaching
the stream, Vronsky, who was holding in the mare with all his
force as she tugged at the bridle, easily overtook three, and
there were left in front of him Mahotin's chestnut Gladiator,
whose hind-quarters were moving lightly and rhythmically up and
down exactly in front of Vronsky, and in front of all, the dainty
mare Diana bearing Kuzovlev more dead than alive.
For the first instant Vronsky was not master either of himself or
his mare. Up to the first obstacle, the stream, he could not
guide the motions of his mare.
Gladiator and Diana came up to it together and almost at the same
instant; simultaneously they rose above the stream and flew
across to the other side; Frou-Frou darted after them, as if
flying; but at the very moment when Vronsky felt himself in the
air, he suddenly saw almost under his mare's hoofs Kuzovlev, who
was floundering with Diana on the further side of the stream.
(Kuzovlev had let go the reins as he took the leap, and the mare
had sent him flying over her head.) Those details Vronsky learned
later; at the moment all he saw was that just under him, where
Frou-Frou must alight, Diana's legs or head might be in the way.
But Frou-Frou drew up her legs and back in the very act of
leaping, like a falling cat, and, clearing the other mare,
alighted beyond her.
"O the darling!" thought Vronsky.
After crossing the stream Vronsky had complete control of his
mare, and began holding her in, intending to cross the great
barrier behind Mahotin, and to try to overtake him in the clear
ground of about five hundred yards that followed it.
The great barrier stood just in front of the imperial pavilion.
The Tsar and the whole court and crowds of people were all gazing
at them--at him, and Mahotin a length ahead of him, as they drew
near the "devil," as the solid barrier was called. Vronsky was
aware of those eyes fastened upon him from all sides, but he saw
nothing except the ears and neck of his own mare, the ground
racing to meet him, and the back and white legs of Gladiator
beating time swiftly before him, and keeping always the same
distance ahead. Gladiator rose, with no sound of knocking
against anything. With a wave of his short tail he disappeared
from Vronsky's sight.
"Bravo!" cried a voice.
At the same instant, under Vronsky's eyes, right before him
flashed the palings of the barrier. Without the slightest change
in her action his mare flew over it; the palings vanished, and he
heard only a crash behind him. The mare, excited by Gladiator's
keeping ahead, had risen too soon before the barrier, and grazed
it with her hind hoofs. But her pace never changed, and Vronsky,
feeling a spatter of mud in his face, realized that he was once
more the same distance from Gladiator. Once more he perceived in
front of him the same back and short tail, and again the same
swiftly moving white legs that got no further away.
At the very moment when Vronsky thought that now was the time to
overtake Mahotin, Frou-Frou herself, understanding his thoughts,
without any incitement on his part, gained ground considerably,
and began getting alongside of Mahotin on the most favorable
side, close to the inner cord. Mahotin would not let her pass
that side. Vronsky had hardly formed the thought that he could
perhaps pass on the outer side, when Frou-Frou shifted her pace
and began overtaking him on the other side. Frou-Frou's
shoulder, beginning by now to be dark with sweat, was even with
Gladiator's back. For a few lengths they moved evenly. But
before the obstacle they were approaching, Vronsky began working
at the reins, anxious to avoid having to take the outer circle,
and swiftly passed Mahotin just upon the declivity. He caught a
glimpse of his mud-stained face as he flashed by. He even
fancied that he smiled. Vronsky passed Mahotin, but he was
immediately aware of him close upon him, and he never ceased
hearing the even-thudding hoofs and the rapid and still quite
fresh breathing of Gladiator.
The next two obstacles, the water course and the barrier, were
easily crossed, but Vronsky began to hear the snorting and thud
of Gladiator closer upon him. He urged on his mare, and to his
delight felt that she easily quickened her pace, and the thud of
Gladiator's hoofs was again heard at the same distance away.
Vronsky was at the head of the race, just as he wanted to be and
as Cord had advised, and now he felt sure of being the winner.
His excitement, his delight, and his tenderness for Frou-Frou
grew keener and keener. He longed to look round again, but he
did not dare do this, and tried to be cool and not to urge on his
mare so to keep the same reserve of force in her as he felt that
Gladiator still kept. There remained only one obstacle, the most
difficult; if he could cross it ahead of the others he would come
in first. He was flying towards the Irish barricade, Frou-Frou
and he both together saw the barricade in the distance, and both
the man and the mare had a moment's hesitation. He saw the
uncertainty in the mare's ears and lifted the whip, but at the
same time felt that his fears were groundless; the mare knew what
was wanted. She quickened her pace and rose smoothly, just as he
had fancied she would, and as she left the ground gave herself up
to the force of her rush, which carried her far beyond the ditch;
and with the same rhythm, without effort, with the same leg
forward, Frou-Frou fell back into her pace again.
"Bravo, Vronsky!" he heard shouts from a knot of men--he knew
they were his friends in the regiment--who were standing at the
obstacle. He could not fail to recognize Yashvin's voice though
he did not see him.
"O my sweet!" he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he listened for
what was happening behind. "He's cleared it!" he thought,
catching the thud of Gladiator's hoofs behind him. There
remained only the last ditch, filled with water and five feet
wide. Vronsky did not even look at it, but anxious to get in a
long way first began sawing away at the reins, lifting the mare's
head and letting it go in time with her paces. He felt that the
mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her neck and
shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops on
her mane, her head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short,
sharp gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than
enough for the remaining five hundred yards. It was only from
feeling himself nearer the ground and from the peculiar
smoothness of his motion that Vronsky knew how greatly the mare
had quickened her pace. She flew over the ditch as though not
noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but at the same
instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had failed to keep
up with the mare's pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a
fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the
saddle. All at once his position had shifted and he knew that
something awful had happened. He could not yet make out what had
happened, when the white legs of a chestnut horse flashed by
close to him, and Mahotin passed at a swift gallop. Vronsky was
touching the ground with one foot, and his mare was sinking on
that foot. He just had time to free his leg when she fell on one
side, gasping painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise with
her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his
feet like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky had
broken her back. But that he only knew much later. At that
moment he knew only that Mahotin had flown swiftly by, while he
stood staggering alone on the muddy, motionless ground, and
Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her head back and
gazing at him with her exquisite eyes. Still unable to realize
what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare's reins. Again she
struggled all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the
saddle heaving, she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her
back, she quivered all over and again fell on her side. With a
face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and his
cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the stomach and
again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but
thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her
master with her speaking eyes.
"A--a--a!" groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head. "Ah! what
have I done!" he cried. "The race lost! And my fault! shameful,
unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have
I done!"
A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his
regiment, ran up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole
and unhurt. The mare had broken her back, and it was decided to
shoot her. Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak
to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap that had
fallen off, walked away from the race course, not knowing where
he was going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in
his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune
beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.
Yashvin overtook him with his cap, and led him home, and half an
hour later Vronsky had regained his self-possession. But the
memory of that race remained for long in his heart, the cruelest
and bitterest memory of his life.
Chapter 26
The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he
was more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the
beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place
for the sake of his health, deranged by the winter's work that
every year grew heavier. And just as always he returned in July
and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As
usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of
town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their
conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya's he had never
spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and
that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most
convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife.
He was a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be
slightly displeased with her for that first midnight
conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to her
there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. "You would not
be open with me," he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; "so
much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I
won't be open with you. So much the worse for you!" he said
mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a
fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, "Oh,
very well then! you shall burn for this!" This man, so subtle
and astute in official life, did not realize all the
senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not
realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his
actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his
heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his
family, that is, his wife and son. He who had been such a
careful father, had from the end of that winter become peculiarly
frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering
tone he used with his wife. "Aha, young man!" was the greeting
with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in
any previous year had so much official business as that year.
But he was not aware that he sought work for himself that year,
that this was one of the means for keeping shut that secret place
where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and his
thoughts about them, which became more terrible the longer they
lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey
Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife's behavior, the mild
and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer,
but he would have been greatly angered with any man who should
question him on that subject. For this reason there positively
came into Alexey Alexandrovitch's face a look of haughtiness and
severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife's health.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his
wife's behavior, and he actually succeeded in not thinking about
it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch's permanent summer villa was in Peterhof,
and the Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the
summer there, close to Anna, and constantly seeing her. That
year Countess Lidia Ivanovna declined to settle in Peterhof, was
not once at Anna Arkadyevna's, and in conversation with Alexey
Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of Anna's close
intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch sternly
cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion,
and from that time began to avoid Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He
did not want to see, and did not see, that many people in society
cast dubious glances on his wife; he did not want to understand,
and did not understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted
on staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far from
the camp of Vronsky's regiment. He did not allow himself to
think about it, and he did not think about it; but all the same
though he never admitted it to himself, and had no proofs, not
even suspicious evidence, in the bottom of his heart he knew
beyond all doubt that he was a deceived husband, and he was
profoundly miserable about it.
How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife
Alexey Alexandrovitch had looked at other men's faithless wives
and other deceived husbands and asked himself: "How can people
descend to that? how is it they don't put an end to such a
hideous position?" But now, when the misfortune had come upon
himself, he was so far from thinking of putting an end to the
position that he would not recognize it at all, would not
recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.
Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been
at their country villa. Once he dined there, another time he
spent the evening there with a party of friends, but he had not
once stayed the night there, as it had been his habit to do in
previous years.
The day of the races had been a very busy day for Alexey
Alexandrovitch; but when mentally sketching out the day in the
morning, he made up his mind to go to their country house to see
his wife immediately after dinner, and from there to the races,
which all the Court were to witness, and at which he was bound to
be present. He was going to see his wife, because he had
determined to see her once a week to keep up appearances. And
besides, on that day, as it was the fifteenth, he had to give his
wife some money for her expenses, according to their usual
arrangement.
With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought
all this about his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray
further in regard to her.
That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The
evening before, Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet
by a celebrated traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg,
and with it she enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler
himself, as he was an extremely interesting person from various
points of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch
had not had time to read the pamphlet through in the evening, and
finished it in the morning. Then people began arriving with
petitions, and there came the reports, interviews, appointments,
dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants, notes,
the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that
always took up so much time. Then there was private business of
his own, a visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his
property. The steward did not take up much time. He simply gave
Alexey Alexandrovitch the money he needed together with a brief
statement of the position of his affairs, which was not
altogether satisfactory, as it had happened that during that
year, owing to increased expenses, more had been paid out than
usual, and there was a deficit. But the doctor, a celebrated
Petersburg doctor, who was an intimate acquaintance of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time. Alexey
Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was surprised
at his visit, and still more so when the doctor questioned him
very carefully about his health, listened to his breathing, and
tapped at his liver. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not know that his
friend Lidia Ivanovna, noticing that he was not as well as usual
that year, had begged the doctor to go and examine him. "Do this
for my sake," the Countess Lidia Ivanovna had said to him.
"I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess," replied the
doctor.
"A priceless man!" said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch.
He found the liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive
powers weakened, while the course of mineral waters had been
quite without effect. He prescribed more physical exercise as
far as possible, and as far as possible less mental strain, and
above all no worry--in other words, just what was as much out of
Alexey Alexandrovitch's power as abstaining from breathing. Then
he withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense
that something was wrong with him, and that there was no chance
of curing it.
As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the
staircase an acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was secretary of
Alexey Alexandrovitch's department. They had been comrades at
the university, and though they rarely met, they thought highly
of each other and were excellent friends, and so there was no one
to whom the doctor would have given his opinion of a patient so
freely as to Sludin.
"How glad I am you've been seeing him!" said Sludin. "He's not
well, and I fancy.... Well, what do you think of him?"
"I'll tell you," said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin's head to
his coachman to bring the carriage round. "It's just this," said
the doctor, taking a finger of his kid glove in his white hands
and pulling it, "if you don't strain the strings, and then try to
break them, you'll find it a difficult job; but strain a string
to its very utmost, and the mere weight of one finger on the
strained string will snap it. And with his close assiduity, his
conscientious devotion to his work, he's strained to the utmost;
and there's some outside burden weighing on him, and not a light
one," concluded the doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly.
"Will you be at the races?" he added, as he sank into his seat in
the carriage.
"Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time," the doctor
responded vaguely to some reply of Sludin's he had not caught.
Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came
the celebrated traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of
the pamphlet he had only just finished reading and his previous
acquaintance with the subject, impressed the traveler by the
depth of his knowledge of the subject and the breadth and
enlightenment of his view of it.
At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial
marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey
Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his
departure, he had to finish the daily routine of business with
his secretary, and then he still had to drive round to call on a
certain great personage on a matter of grave and serious import.
Alexey Alexandrovitch only just managed to be back by five
o'clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining with his secretary, he
invited him to drive with him to his country villa and to the
races.
Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey
Alexandrovitch always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a
third person in his interviews with his wife.
Chapter 27
Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking glass, and, with
Annushka's assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when
she heard carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance.
"It's too early for Betsy," she thought, and glancing out of the
window she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she knew so well
sticking up each side of it. "How unlucky! Can he be going to
stay the night?" she wondered, and the thought of all that might
come of such a chance struck her as so awful and terrible that,
without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him
with a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of
that spirit of falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come
to know of late, she abandoned herself to that spirit and began
talking, hardly knowing what she was saying.
"Ah, how nice of you!" she said, giving her husband her hand, and
greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile.
"You're staying the night, I hope?" was the first word the spirit
of falsehood prompted her to utter; "and now we'll go together.
Only it's a pity I've promised Betsy. She's coming for me."
Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy's name.
"Oh, I'm not going to separate the inseparables," he said in his
usual bantering tone. "I'm going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I'm
ordered exercise by the doctors too. I'll walk, and fancy myself
at the springs again."
"There's no hurry," said Anna. "Would you like tea?"
She rang.
"Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is
here. Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch,
you've not been to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on
the terrace," she said, turning first to one and then to the
other.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast.
She was the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive
look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were,
keeping watch on her.
Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.
She sat down beside her husband.
"You don't look quite well," she said.
"Yes," he said; "the doctor's been with me today and wasted an
hour of my time. I feel that some one of our friends must have
sent him: my health's so precious, it seems."
"No; what did he say?"
She questioned him about his health and what he had been doing,
and tried to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.
All this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar
brilliance in her eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now
attach any special significance to this tone of hers. He heard
only her words and gave them only the direct sense they bore.
And he answered simply, though jestingly. There was nothing
remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could Anna
recall this brief scene without an agonizing pang of shame.
Seryozha came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey
Alexandrovitch had allowed himself to observe he would have
noticed the timid and bewildered eyes with which Seryozha glanced
first at his father and then at his mother. But he would not see
anything, and he did not see it.
"Ah, the young man! He's grown. Really, he's getting quite a
man. How are you, young man?"
And he gave his hand to the scared child. Seryozha had been shy
of his father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch
had taken to calling him young man, and since that insoluble
question had occurred to him whether Vronsky were a friend or a
foe, he avoided his father. He looked round towards his mother
as though seeking shelter. It was only with his mother that he
was at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch was holding his
son by the shoulder while he was speaking to the governess, and
Seryozha was so miserably uncomfortable that Anna saw he was on
the point of tears.
Anna, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in,
noticing that Seryozha was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took
Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand from her son's shoulder, and kissing
the boy, led him out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.
"It's time to start, though," said she, glancing at her watch.
"How is it Betsy doesn't come?..."
"Yes," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his
hands and cracked his fingers. "I've come to bring you some
money, too, for nightingales, we know, can't live on fairy
tales," he said. "You want it, I expect?"
"No, I don't...yes, I do," she said, not looking at him, and
crimsoning to the roots of her hair. "But you'll come back here
after the races, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes!" answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And here's the glory
of Peterhof, Princess Tverskaya," he added, looking out of the
window at the elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed
extremely high. "What elegance! Charming! Well, let us be
starting too, then."
Princess Tverskaya did not get out of her carriage, but her
groom, in high boots, a cape, and black hat, darted out at the
entrance.
"I'm going; good-bye!" said Anna, and kissing her son, she went
up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. "It
was ever so nice of you to come."
Alexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand.
"Well, _au revoir_, then! You'll come back for some tea; that's
delightful!" she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as
soon as she no longer saw him, she was aware of the spot on her
hand that his lips had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion.
Chapter 28
When Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Anna was
already sitting in the pavilion beside Betsy, in that pavilion
where all the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of
her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover,
were the two centers of her existence, and unaided by her
external senses she was aware of their nearness. She was aware
of her husband approaching a long way off, and she could not help
following him in the surging crowd in the midst of which he was
moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw him
now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now
exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now
assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this
world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of
his ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful
to her. "Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on,
that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these
lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many
tools for getting on."
From his glances towards the ladies' pavilion (he was staring
straight at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of
muslin, ribbons, feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he
was looking for her, but she purposely avoided noticing him.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch!" Princess Betsy called to him; "I'm sure
you don't see your wife: here she is."
He smiled his chilly smile.
"There's so much splendor here that one's eyes are dazzled," he
said, and he went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a
man should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from
her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances, giving to
each what was due--that is to say, jesting with the ladies and
dealing out friendly greetings among the men. Below, near the
pavilion, was standing an adjutant-general of whom Alexey
Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted for his intelligence and
culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into conversation with
him.
There was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered
conversation. The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of
races. Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them. Anna heard
his high, measured tones, not losing one word, and every word
struck her as false, and stabbed her ears with pain.
When the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent forward
and gazed with fixed eyes at Vronsky as he went up to his horse
and mounted, and at the same time she heard that loathsome,
never-ceasing voice of her husband. She was in an agony of
terror for Vronsky, but a still greater agony was the
never-ceasing, as it seemed to her, stream of her husband's
shrill voice with its familiar intonations.
"I'm a wicked woman, a lost woman," she thought; "but I don't
like lying, I can't endure falsehood, while as for _him_ (her
husband) it's the breath of his life--falsehood. He knows all
about it, he sees it all; what does he care if he can talk so
calmly? If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Vronsky, I
might respect him. No, all he wants is falsehood and propriety,"
Anna said to herself, not considering exactly what it was she
wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to see him
behave. She did not understand either that Alexey
Alexandrovitch's peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to
her, was merely the expression of his inward distress and
uneasiness. As a child that has been hurt skips about, putting
all his muscles into movement to drown the pain, in the same way
Alexey Alexandrovitch needed mental exercise to drown the
thoughts of his wife that in her presence and in Vronsky's, and
with the continual iteration of his name, would force themselves
on his attention. And it was as natural for him to talk well and
cleverly, as it is natural for a child to skip about. He was
saying:
"Danger in the races of officers, of cavalry men, is an essential
element in the race. If England can point to the most brilliant
feats of cavalry in military history, it is simply owing to the
fact that she has historically developed this force both in
beasts and in men. Sport has, in my opinion, a great value, and
as is always the case, we see nothing but what is most
superficial."
"It's not superficial," said Princess Tverskaya. "One of the
officers, they say, has broken two ribs."
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled his smile, which uncovered his
teeth, but revealed nothing more.
"We'll admit, princess, that that's not superficial," he said,
"but internal. But that's not the point," and he turned again to
the general with whom he was talking seriously; "we mustn't
forget that those who are taking part in the race are military
men, who have chosen that career, and one must allow that every
calling has its disagreeable side. It forms an integral part of
the duties of an officer. Low sports, such as prize-fighting or
Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But specialized
trials of skill are a sign of development."
"No, I shan't come another time; it's too upsetting," said
Princess Betsy. "Isn't it, Anna?"
"It is upsetting, but one can't tear oneself away," said another
lady. "If I'd been a Roman woman I should never have missed a
single circus."
Anna said nothing, and keeping her opera glass up, gazed always
at the same spot.
At that moment a tall general walked through the pavilion.
Breaking off what he was saying, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up
hurriedly, though with dignity, and bowed low to the general.
"You're not racing?" the officer asked, chaffing him.
"My race is a harder one," Alexey Alexandrovitch responded
deferentially.
And though the answer meant nothing, the general looked as though
he had heard a witty remark from a witty man, and fully relished
_la pointe de la sauce_.
"There are two aspects," Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: "those
who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles
is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the
spectator, I admit, but..."
"Princess, bets!" sounded Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice from
below, addressing Betsy. "Who's your favorite?"
"Anna and I are for Kuzovlev," replied Betsy.
"I'm for Vronsky. A pair of gloves?"
"Done!"
"But it is a pretty sight, isn't it?"
Alexey Alexandrovitch paused while there was talking about him,
but he began again directly.
"I admit that manly sports do not..." he was continuing.
But at that moment the racers started, and all conversation
ceased. Alexey Alexandrovitch too was silent, and everyone stood
up and turned towards the stream. Alexey Alexandrovitch took no
interest in the race, and so he did not watch the racers, but
fell listlessly to scanning the spectators with his weary eyes.
His eyes rested upon Anna.
Her face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and
no one but one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan,
and she held her breath. He looked at her and hastily turned
away, scrutinizing other faces.
"But here's this lady too, and others very much moved as well;
it's very natural," Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. He tried
not to look at her, but unconsciously his eyes were drawn to her.
He examined that face again, trying not to read what was so
plainly written on it, and against his own will, with horror read
on it what he did not want to know.
The first fall--Kuzovlev's, at the stream--agitated everyone,
but Alexey Alexandrovitch saw distinctly on Anna's pale,
triumphant face that the man she was watching had not fallen.
When, after Mahotin and Vronsky had cleared the worst barrier,
the next officer had been thrown straight on his head at it and
fatally injured, and a shudder of horror passed over the whole
public, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that Anna did not even notice
it, and had some difficulty in realizing what they were talking
of about her. But more and more often, and with greater
persistence, he watched her. Anna, wholly engrossed as she was
with the race, became aware of her husband's cold eyes fixed
upon her from one side.
She glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and
with a slight frown turned away again.
"Ah, I don't care!" she seemed to say to him, and she did not
once glance at him again.
The race was an unlucky one, and of the seventeen officers who
rode in it more than half were thrown and hurt. Towards the end
of the race everyone was in a state of agitation, which was
intensified by the fact that the Tsar was displeased.
Chapter 29
Everyone was loudly expressing disapprobation, everyone was
repeating a phrase some one had uttered--"The lions and
gladiators will be the next thing," and everyone was feeling
horrified; so that when Vronsky fell to the ground, and Anna
moaned aloud, there was nothing very out of the way in it. But
afterwards a change came over Anna's face which really was beyond
decorum. She utterly lost her head. She began fluttering like a
caged bird, at one moment would have got up and moved away, at
the next turned to Betsy.
"Let us go, let us go!" she said.
But Betsy did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a
general who had come up to her.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went up to Anna and courteously offered her
his arm.
"Let us go, if you like," he said in French, but Anna was
listening to the general and did not notice her husband.
"He's broken his leg too, so they say," the general was saying.
"This is beyond everything."
Without answering her husband, Anna lifted her opera glass and
gazed towards the place where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so
far off, and there was such a crowd of people about it, that she
could make out nothing. She laid down the opera glass, and would
have moved away, but at that moment an officer galloped up and
made some announcement to the Tsar. Anna craned forward,
listening.
"Stiva! Stiva!" she cried to her brother.
But her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved
away.
"Once more I offer you my arm if you want to be going," said
Alexey Alexandrovitch, reaching towards her hand.
She drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his
face answered:
"No, no, let me be, I'll stay."
She saw now that from the place of Vronsky's accident an officer
was running across the course towards the pavilion. Betsy waved
her handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the
rider was not killed, but the horse had broken its back.
On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her
fan. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could
not control her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her
bosom. Alexey Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen her, giving
her time to recover herself.
"For the third time I offer you my arm," he said to her after a
little time, turning to her. Anna gazed at him and did not know
what to say. Princess Betsy came to her rescue.
"No, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Anna and I promised to take
her home," put in Betsy.
"Excuse me, princess," he said, smiling courteously but looking
her very firmly in the face, "but I see that Anna's not very
well, and I wish her to come home with me."
Anna looked about her in a frightened way, got up submissively,
and laid her hand on her husband's arm.
"I'll send to him and find out, and let you know," Betsy
whispered to her.
As they left the pavilion, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as always,
talked to those he met, and Anna had, as always, to talk and
answer; but she was utterly beside herself, and moved hanging on
her husband's arm as though in a dream.
"Is he killed or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I
see him today?" she was thinking.
She took her seat in her husband's carriage in silence, and in
silence drove out of the crowd of carriages. In spite of all he
had seen, Alexey Alexandrovitch still did not allow himself to
consider his wife's real condition. He merely saw the outward
symptoms. He saw that she was behaving unbecomingly, and
considered it his duty to tell her so. But it was very difficult
for him not to say more, to tell her nothing but that. He opened
his mouth to tell her she had behaved unbecomingly, but he could
not help saying something utterly different.
"What an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel
spectacles," he said. "I observe..."
"Eh? I don't understand," said Anna contemptuously.
He was offended, and at once began to say what he had meant to
say.
"I am obliged to tell you," he began.
"So now we are to have it out," she thought, and she felt
frightened.
"I am obliged to tell you that your behavior has been unbecoming
today," he said to her in French.
"In what way has my behavior been unbecoming?" she said aloud,
turning her head swiftly and looking him straight in the face,
not with the bright expression that seemed covering something,
but with a look of determination, under which she concealed with
difficulty the dismay she was feeling.
"Mind," he said, pointing to the open window opposite the
coachman.
He got up and pulled up the window.
"What did you consider unbecoming?" she repeated.
"The despair you were unable to conceal at the accident to one of
the riders."
He waited for her to answer, but she was silent, looking straight
before her.
"I have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that
even malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you.
There was a time when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am
not speaking of that now. Now I speak only of your external
attitude. You have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not
to occur again."
She did not hear half of what he was saying; she felt
panic-stricken before him, and was thinking whether it was true
that Vronsky was not killed. Was it of him they were speaking
when they said the rider was unhurt, but the horse had broken its
back? She merely smiled with a pretense of irony when he
finished, and made no reply, because she had not heard what he
said. Alexey Alexandrovitch had begun to speak boldly, but as he
realized plainly what he was speaking of, the dismay she was
feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a strange
misapprehension came over him.
"She is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly
what she told me before; that there is no foundation for my
suspicions, that it's absurd."
At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging
over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would
answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and
utterly groundless. So terrible to him was what he knew that now
he was ready to believe anything. But the expression of her
face, scared and gloomy, did not now promise even deception.
"Possibly I was mistaken," said he. "If so, I beg your pardon."
"No, you were not mistaken," she said deliberately, looking
desperately into his cold face. "You were not mistaken. I was,
and I could not help being in despair. I hear you, but I am
thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can't bear
you; I'm afraid of you, and I hate you.... You can do what you
like to me."
And dropping back into the corner of the carriage, she broke into
sobs, hiding her face in her hands. Alexey Alexandrovitch did
not stir, and kept looking straight before him. But his whole
face suddenly bore the solemn rigidity of the dead, and his
expression did not change during the whole time of the drive
home. On reaching the house he turned his head to her, still
with the same expression.
"Very well! But I expect a strict observance of the external
forms of propriety till such time"--his voice shook--"as I may
take measures to secure my honor and communicate them to you."
He got out first and helped her to get out. Before the servants
he pressed her hand, took his seat in the carriage, and drove
back to Petersburg. Immediately afterwards a footman came from
Princess Betsy and brought Anna a note.
"I sent to Alexey to find out how he is, and he writes me he is
quite well and unhurt, but in despair."
"So _he_ will be here," she thought. "What a good thing I told
him all!"
She glanced at her watch. She had still three hours to wait, and
the memories of their last meeting set her blood in flame.
"My God, how light it is! It's dreadful, but I do love to see
his face, and I do love this fantastic light.... My husband!
Oh! yes.... Well, thank God! everything's over with him."
Chapter 30
In the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys
had betaken themselves, as in all places indeed where people are
gathered together, the usual process, as it were, of the
crystallization of society went on, assigning to each member of
that society a definite and unalterable place. Just as the
particle of water in frost, definitely and unalterably, takes the
special form of the crystal of snow, so each new person that
arrived at the springs was at once placed in his special place.
_Fuerst_ Shtcherbatsky, _sammt Gemahlin und Tochter_, by the
apartments they took, and from their name and from the friends
they made, were immediately crystallized into a definite place
marked out for them.
There was visiting the watering-place that year a real German
Fuerstin, in consequence of which the crystallizing process went
on more vigorously than ever. Princess Shtcherbatskaya wished,
above everything, to present her daughter to this German
princess, and the day after their arrival she duly performed this
rite. Kitty made a low and graceful curtsey in the _very simple_,
that is to say, very elegant frock that had been ordered her from
Paris. The German princess said, "I hope the roses will soon
come back to this pretty little face," and for the Shtcherbatskys
certain definite lines of existence were at once laid down from
which there was no departing. The Shtcherbatskys made the
acquaintance too of the family of an English Lady Somebody, and
of a German countess and her son, wounded in the last war, and of
a learned Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet
inevitably the Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society
of a Moscow lady, Marya Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter,
whom Kitty disliked, because she had fallen ill, like herself,
over a love affair, and a Moscow colonel, whom Kitty had known
from childhood, and always seen in uniform and epaulets, and who
now, with his little eyes and his open neck and flowered cravat,
was uncommonly ridiculous and tedious, because there was no
getting rid of him. When all this was so firmly established,
Kitty began to be very much bored, especially as the prince went
away to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She
took no interest in the people she knew, feeling that nothing
fresh would come of them. Her chief mental interest in the
watering-place consisted in watching and making theories about
the people she did not know. It was characteristic of Kitty that
she always imagined everything in people in the most favorable
light possible, especially so in those she did not know. And now
as she made surmises as to who people were, what were their
relations to one another, and what they were like, Kitty endowed
them with the most marvelous and noble characters, and found
confirmation of her idea in her observations.
Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian
girl who had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian
lady, Madame Stahl, as everyone called her. Madame Stahl
belonged to the highest society, but she was so ill that she
could not walk, and only on exceptionally fine days made her
appearance at the springs in an invalid carriage. But it was not
so much from ill-health as from pride--so Princess
Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it--that Madame Stahl had not made
the acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The Russian
girl looked after Madame Stahl, and besides that, she was, as
Kitty observed, on friendly terms with all the invalids who were
seriously ill, and there were many of them at the springs, and
looked after them in the most natural way. This Russian girl was
not, as Kitty gathered, related to Madame Stahl, nor was she a
paid attendant. Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other
people called her "Mademoiselle Varenka." Apart from the
interest Kitty took in this girl's relations with Madame Stahl
and with other unknown persons, Kitty, as often happened, felt an
inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka, and was aware
when their eyes met that she too liked her.
Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her
first youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth;
she might have been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her
features were criticized separately, she was handsome rather than
plain, in spite of the sickly hue of her face. She would have
been a good figure, too, if it had not been for her extreme
thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her
medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men.
She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without
fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover,
she would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of
just what Kitty had too much of--of the suppressed fire of
vitality, and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.
She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no
doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything
outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that
was for Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka.
Kitty felt that in her, in her manner of life, she would find an
example of what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in
life, a dignity in life--apart from the worldly relations of
girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to her now
as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser.
The more attentively Kitty watched her unknown friend, the more
convinced she was this girl was the perfect creature she fancied
her, and the more eagerly she wished to make her acquaintance.
The two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time
they met, Kitty's eyes said: "Who are you? What are you? Are
you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for
goodness' sake don't suppose," her eyes added, "that I would
force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you."
"I like you too, and you're very, very sweet. And I should like
you better still, if I had time," answered the eyes of the
unknown girl. Kitty saw indeed, that she was always busy.
Either she was taking the children of a Russian family home from
the springs, or fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping
her up in it, or trying to interest an irritable invalid, or
selecting and buying cakes for tea for someone.
Soon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in
the morning crowd at the springs two persons who attracted
universal and unfavorable attention. These were a tall man with
a stooping figure, and huge hands, in an old coat too short for
him, with black, simple, and yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked,
kind-looking woman, very badly and tastelessly dressed.
Recognizing these persons as Russians, Kitty had already in her
imagination begun constructing a delightful and touching romance
about them. But the princess, having ascertained from the
visitors' list that this was Nikolay Levin and Marya Nikolaevna,
explained to Kitty what a bad man this Levin was, and all her
fancies about these two people vanished. Not so much from what
her mother told her, as from the fact that it was Konstantin's
brother, this pair suddenly seemed to Kitty intensely unpleasant.
This Levin, with his continual twitching of his head, aroused in
her now an irrepressible feeling of disgust.
It seemed to her that his big, terrible eyes, which persistently
pursued her, expressed a feeling of hatred and contempt, and she
tried to avoid meeting him.
Chapter 31
It was a wet day; it had been raining all the morning, and the
invalids, with their parasols, had flocked into the arcades.
Kitty was walking there with her mother and the Moscow colonel,
smart and jaunty in his European coat, bought ready-made at
Frankfort. They were walking on one side of the arcade, trying
to avoid Levin, who was walking on the other side. Varenka, in
her dark dress, in a black hat with a turn-down brim, was walking
up and down the whole length of the arcade with a blind
Frenchwoman, and, every time she met Kitty, they exchanged
friendly glances.
"Mamma, couldn't I speak to her?" said Kitty, watching her
unknown friend, and noticing that she was going up to the spring,
and that they might come there together.
"Oh, if you want to so much, I'll find out about her first and
make her acquaintance myself," answered her mother. "What do you
see in her out of the way? A companion, she must be. If you
like, I'll make acquaintance with Madame Stahl; I used to know
her _belle-soeur_," added the princess, lifting her head haughtily.
Kitty knew that the princess was offended that Madame Stahl had
seemed to avoid making her acquaintance. Kitty did not insist.
"How wonderfully sweet she is!" she said, gazing at Varenka just
as she handed a glass to the Frenchwoman. "Look how natural and
sweet it all is."
"It's so funny to see your _engouements_," said the princess.
"No, we'd better go back," she added, noticing Levin coming towards
them with his companion and a German doctor, to whom he was
talking very noisily and angrily.
They turned to go back, when suddenly they heard, not noisy talk,
but shouting. Levin, stopping short, was shouting at the doctor,
and the doctor, too, was excited. A crowd gathered about them.
The princess and Kitty beat a hasty retreat, while the colonel
joined the crowd to find out what was the matter.
A few minutes later the colonel overtook them.
"What was it?" inquired the princess.
"Scandalous and disgraceful!" answered the colonel. "The one
thing to be dreaded is meeting Russians abroad. That tall
gentleman was abusing the doctor, flinging all sorts of insults
at him because he wasn't treating him quite as he liked, and he
began waving his stick at him. It's simply a scandal!"
"Oh, how unpleasant!" said the princess. "Well, and how did it
end?"
"Luckily at that point that...the one in the mushroom hat...
intervened. A Russian lady, I think she is," said the colonel.
"Mademoiselle Varenka?" asked Kitty.
"Yes, yes. She came to the rescue before anyone; she took the
man by the arm and led him away."
"There, mamma," said Kitty; "you wonder that I'm enthusiastic
about her."
The next day, as she watched her unknown friend, Kitty noticed
that Mademoiselle Varenka was already on the same terms with
Levin and his companion as with her other _proteges_. She went up
to them, entered into conversation with them, and served as
interpreter for the woman, who could not speak any foreign
language.
Kitty began to entreat her mother still more urgently to let her
make friends with Varenka. And, disagreeable as it was to the
princess to seem to take the first step in wishing to make the
acquaintance of Madame Stahl, who thought fit to give herself
airs, she made inquiries about Varenka, and, having ascertained
particulars about her tending to prove that there could be no
harm though little good in the acquaintance, she herself
approached Varenka and made acquaintance with her.
Choosing a time when her daughter had gone to the spring, while
Varenka had stopped outside the baker's, the princess went up to
her.
"Allow me to make your acquaintance," she said, with her
dignified smile. "My daughter has lost her heart to you," she
said. "Possibly you do not know me. I am..."
"That feeling is more than reciprocal, princess," Varenka
answered hurriedly.
"What a good deed you did yesterday to our poor compatriot!" said
the princess.
Varenka flushed a little. "I don't remember. I don't think I
did anything," she said.
"Why, you saved that Levin from disagreeable consequences."
"Yes, _sa compagne_ called me, and I tried to pacify him, he's
very ill, and was dissatisfied with the doctor. I'm used to
looking after such invalids."
"Yes, I've heard you live at Mentone with your aunt--I think--
Madame Stahl: I used to know her _belle-soeur_."
"No, she's not my aunt. I call her mamma, but I am not related
to her; I was brought up by her," answered Varenka, flushing a
little again.
This was so simply said, and so sweet was the truthful and candid
expression of her face, that the princess saw why Kitty had taken
such a fancy to Varenka.
"Well, and what's this Levin going to do?" asked the princess.
"He's going away," answered Varenka.
At that instant Kitty came up from the spring beaming with
delight that her mother had become acquainted with her unknown
friend.
"Well, see, Kitty, your intense desire to make friends with
Mademoiselle. . ."
"Varenka," Varenka put in smiling, "that's what everyone calls
me."
Kitty blushed with pleasure, and slowly, without speaking,
pressed her new friend's hand, which did not respond to her
pressure, but lay motionless in her hand. The hand did not
respond to her pressure, but the face of Mademoiselle Varenka
glowed with a soft, glad, though rather mournful smile, that
showed large but handsome teeth.
"I have long wished for this too," she said.
"But you are so busy."
"Oh, no, I'm not at all busy," answered Varenka, but at that
moment she had to leave her new friends because two little
Russian girls, children of an invalid, ran up to her.
"Varenka, mamma's calling!" they cried.
And Varenka went after them.
Chapter 32
The particulars which the princess had learned in regard to
Varenka's past and her relations with Madame Stahl were as
follows:
Madame Stahl, of whom some people said that she had worried her
husband out of his life, while others said it was he who had made
her wretched by his immoral behavior, had always been a woman of
weak health and enthusiastic temperament. When, after her
separation from her husband, she gave birth to her only child,
the child had died almost immediately, and the family of Madame
Stahl, knowing her sensibility, and fearing the news would kill
her, had substituted another child, a baby born the same night
and in the same house in Petersburg, the daughter of the chief
cook of the Imperial Household. This was Varenka. Madame Stahl
learned later on that Varenka was not her own child, but she went
on bringing her up, especially as very soon afterwards Varenka
had not a relation of her own living. Madame Stahl had now been
living more than ten years continuously abroad, in the south,
never leaving her couch. And some people said that Madame Stahl
had made her social position as a philanthropic, highly religious
woman; other people said she really was at heart the highly
ethical being, living for nothing but the good of her
fellow creatures, which she represented herself to be. No one
knew what her faith was--Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. But
one fact was indubitable--she was in amicable relations with the
highest dignitaries of all the churches and sects.
Varenka lived with her all the while abroad, and everyone who
knew Madame Stahl knew and liked Mademoiselle Varenka, as
everyone called her.
Having learned all these facts, the princess found nothing to
object to in her daughter's intimacy with Varenka, more
especially as Varenka's breeding and education were of the
best--she spoke French and English extremely well--and what was
of the most weight, brought a message from Madame Stahl
expressing her regret that she was prevented by her ill health
from making the acquaintance of the princess.
After getting to know Varenka, Kitty became more and more
fascinated by her friend, and every day she discovered new
virtues in her.
The princess, hearing that Varenka had a good voice, asked her to
come and sing to them in the evening.
"Kitty plays, and we have a piano; not a good one, it's true, but
you will give us so much pleasure," said the princess with her
affected smile, which Kitty disliked particularly just then,
because she noticed that Varenka had no inclination to sing.
Varenka came, however, in the evening and brought a roll of music
with her. The princess had invited Marya Yevgenyevna and her
daughter and the colonel.
Varenka seemed quite unaffected by there being persons present
she did not know, and she went directly to the piano. She could
not accompany herself, but she could sing music at sight very
well. Kitty, who played well, accompanied her.
"You have an extraordinary talent," the princess said to her
after Varenka had sung the first song extremely well.
Marya Yevgenyevna and her daughter expressed their thanks and
admiration.
"Look," said the colonel, looking out of the window, "what an
audience has collected to listen to you." There actually was
quite a considerable crowd under the windows.
"I am very glad it gives you pleasure," Varenka answered simply.
Kitty looked with pride at her friend. She was enchanted by her
talent, and her voice, and her face, but most of all by her
manner, by the way Varenka obviously thought nothing of her
singing and was quite unmoved by their praises. She seemed only
to be asking: "Am I to sing again, or is that enough?"
"If it had been I," thought Kitty, "how proud I should have been!
How delighted I should have been to see that crowd under the
windows! But she's utterly unmoved by it. Her only motive is to
avoid refusing and to please mamma. What is there in her? What
is it gives her the power to look down on everything, to be calm
independently of everything? How I should like to know it and to
learn it of her!" thought Kitty, gazing into her serene face.
The princess asked Varenka to sing again, and Varenka sang
another song, also smoothly, distinctly, and well, standing erect
at the piano and beating time on it with her thin, dark-skinned
hand.
The next song in the book was an Italian one. Kitty played the
opening bars, and looked round at Varenka.
"Let's skip that," said Varenka, flushing a little. Kitty let
her eyes rest on Varenka's face, with a look of dismay and
inquiry.
"Very well, the next one," she said hurriedly, turning over the
pages, and at once feeling that there was something connected
with the song.
"No," answered Varenka with a smile, laying her hand on the
music, "no, let's have that one." And she sang it just as
quietly, as coolly, and as well as the others.
When she had finished, they all thanked her again, and went off
to tea. Kitty and Varenka went out into the little garden that
adjoined the house.
"Am I right, that you have some reminiscences connected with
that song?" said Kitty. "Don't tell me," she added hastily,
"only say if I'm right."
"No, why not? I'll tell you simply," said Varenka, and, without
waiting for a reply, she went on: "Yes, it brings up memories,
once painful ones. I cared for someone once, and I used to sing
him that song."
Kitty with big, wide-open eyes gazed silently, sympathetically at
Varenka.
"I cared for him, and he cared for me; but his mother did not
wish it, and he married another girl. He's living now not far
from us, and I see him sometimes. You didn't think I had a
love story too," she said, and there was a faint gleam in her
handsome face of that fire which Kitty felt must once have glowed
all over her.
"I didn't think so? Why, if I were a man, I could never care for
anyone else after knowing you. Only I can't understand how he
could, to please his mother, forget you and make you unhappy; he
had no heart."
"Oh, no, he's a very good man, and I'm not unhappy; quite the
contrary, I'm very happy. Well, so we shan't be singing any more
now," she added, turning towards the house.
"How good you are! how good you are!" cried Kitty, and stopping
her, she kissed her. "If I could only be even a little like
you!"
"Why should you be like anyone? You're nice as you are," said
Varenka, smiling her gentle, weary smile.
"No, I'm not nice at all. Come, tell me.... Stop a minute,
let's sit down," said Kitty, making her sit down again beside
her. "Tell me, isn't it humiliating to think that a man has
disdained your love, that he hasn't cared for it?..."
"But he didn't disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was
a dutiful son..."
"Yes, but if it hadn't been on account of his mother, if it had
been his own doing?..." said Kitty, feeling she was giving away
her secret, and that her face, burning with the flush of shame,
had betrayed her already.
"In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have
regretted him," answered Varenka, evidently realizing that they
were now talking not of her, but of Kitty.
"But the humiliation," said Kitty, "the humiliation one can never
forget, can never forget," she said, remembering her look at the
last ball during the pause in the music.
"Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?"
"Worse than wrong--shameful."
Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty's hand.
"Why, what is there shameful?" she said. "You didn't tell a man,
who didn't care for you, that you loved him, did you?"
"Of course not; I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no,
there are looks, there are ways; I can't forget it, if I live a
hundred years."
"Why so? I don't understand. The whole point is whether you
love him now or not," said Varenka, who called everything by its
name.
"I hate him; I can't forgive myself."
"Why, what for?"
"The shame, the humiliation!"
"Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!" said Varenka.
"There isn't a girl who hasn't been through the same. And it's
all so unimportant."
"Why, what is important?" said Kitty, looking into her face with
inquisitive wonder.
"Oh, there's so much that's important," said Varenka, smiling.
"Why, what?"
"Oh, so much that's more important," answered Varenka, not
knowing what to say. But at that instant they heard the
princess's voice from the window. "Kitty, it's cold! Either get
a shawl, or come indoors."
"It really is time to go in!" said Varenka, getting up. "I have
to go on to Madame Berthe's; she asked me to."
Kitty held her by the hand, and with passionate curiosity and
entreaty her eyes asked her: "What is it, what is this of such
importance that gives you such tranquillity? You know, tell me!"
But Varenka did not even know what Kitty's eyes were asking her.
She merely thought that she had to go to see Madame Berthe too
that evening, and to make haste home in time for _maman's_ tea at
twelve o'clock. She went indoors, collected her music, and
saying good-bye to everyone, was about to go.
"Allow me to see you home," said the colonel.
"Yes, how can you go alone at night like this?" chimed in the
princess. "Anyway, I'll send Parasha."
Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly restrain a smile at the idea
that she needed an escort.
"No, I always go about alone and nothing ever happens to me," she
said, taking her hat. And kissing Kitty once more, without
saying what was important, she stepped out courageously with the
music under her arm and vanished into the twilight of the summer
night, bearing away with her her secret of what was important and
what gave her the calm and dignity so much to be envied.
Chapter 33
Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this
acquaintance, together with her friendship with Varenka, did not
merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her
in her mental distress. She found this comfort through a
completely new world being opened to her by means of this
acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with her past, an
exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could
contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides
the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto
there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion,
but a religion having nothing in common with that one which Kitty
had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies
and all-night services at the Widow's Home, where one might meet
one's friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the
priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a
whole series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do
more than merely believe because one was told to, which one could
love.
Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to
Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as
on the memory of one's youth, and only once she said in passing
that in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and
faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no
sorrow is trifling--and immediately talked of other things. But
in every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in every
heavenly--as Kitty called it--look, and above all in the whole
story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized
that something "that was important," of which, till then, she had
known nothing.
Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl's character was, touching as was
her story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Kitty could
not help detecting in her some traits which perplexed her. She
noticed that when questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl
had smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with Christian
meekness. She noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic
priest with her, Madame Stahl had studiously kept her face in the
shadow of the lamp-shade and had smiled in a peculiar way.
Trivial as these two observations were, they perplexed her, and
she had her doubts as to Madame Stahl. But on the other hand
Varenka, alone in the world, without friends or relations, with a
melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring nothing,
regretting nothing, was just that perfection of which Kitty dared
hardly dream. In Varenka she realized that one has but to forget
oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.
And that was what Kitty longed to be. Seeing now clearly what
was _the most important_, Kitty was not satisfied with being
enthusiastic over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole
soul to the new life that was opening to her. From Varenka's
accounts of the doings of Madame Stahl and other people whom she
mentioned, Kitty had already constructed the plan of her own
future life. She would, like Madame Stahl's niece, Aline, of
whom Varenka had talked to her a great deal, seek out those who
were in trouble, wherever she might be living, help them as far
as she could, give them the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick,
to criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to
criminals, as Aline did, particularly fascinated Kitty. But all
these were secret dreams, of which Kitty did not talk either to
her mother or to Varenka.
While awaiting the time for carrying out her plans on a large
scale, however, Kitty, even then at the springs, where there were
so many people ill and unhappy, readily found a chance for
practicing her new principles in imitation of Varenka.
At first the princess noticed nothing but that Kitty was much
under the influence of her _engouement_, as she called it, for
Madame Stahl, and still more for Varenka. She saw that Kitty did
not merely imitate Varenka in her conduct, but unconsciously
imitated her in her manner of walking, of talking, of blinking
her eyes. But later on the princess noticed that, apart from
this adoration, some kind of serious spiritual change was taking
place in her daughter.
The princess saw that in the evenings Kitty read a French
testament that Madame Stahl had given her--a thing she had never
done before; that she avoided society acquaintances and
associated with the sick people who were under Varenka's
protection, and especially one poor family, that of a sick
painter, Petrov. Kitty was unmistakably proud of playing the
part of a sister of mercy in that family. All this was well
enough, and the princess had nothing to say against it,
especially as Petrov's wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman,
and that the German princess, noticing Kitty's devotion, praised
her, calling her an angel of consolation. All this would have
been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the
princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so
indeed she told her.
"_Il ne faut jamais rien outrer_," she said to her.
Her daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought
that one could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was
concerned. What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a
doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one
was smitten, and give one's cloak if one's coat were taken? But
the princess disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more
the fact that she felt her daughter did not care to show her all
her heart. Kitty did in fact conceal her new views and feelings
from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not
respect or did not love her mother, but simply because she was
her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone sooner than
to her mother.
"How is it Anna Pavlovna's not been to see us for so long?" the
princess said one day of Madame Petrova. "I've asked her, but
she seems put out about something."
"No, I've not noticed it, maman," said Kitty, flushing hotly.
"Is it long since you went to see them?"
"We're meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,"
answered Kitty,
"Well, you can go," answered the princess, gazing at her
daughter's embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her
embarrassment.
That day Varenka came to dinner and told them that Anna Pavlovna
had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow.
And the princess noticed again that Kitty reddened.
"Kitty, haven't you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?"
said the princess, when they were left alone. "Why has she given
up sending the children and coming to see us?"
Kitty answered that nothing had happened between them, and that
she could not tell why Anna Pavlovna seemed displeased with her.
Kitty answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Anna
Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at
something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not
put into words to herself. It was one of those things which one
knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself, so
terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.
Again and again she went over in her memory all her relations
with the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on
the round, good-humored face of Anna Pavlovna at their meetings;
she remembered their secret confabulations about the invalid,
their plots to draw him away from the work which was forbidden
him, and to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest
boy, who used to call her "my Kitty," and would not go to bed
without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled the thin,
terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown
coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were
so terrible to Kitty at first, and his painful attempts to seem
hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she
had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as
for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to
think of things to say to him. She recalled the timid, softened
look with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of
compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of her own
goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all was! But
all that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was
suddenly spoiled. Anna Pavlovna had met Kitty with affected
cordiality, and had kept continual watch on her and on her
husband.
Could that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the
cause of Anna Pavlovna's coolness?
"Yes," she mused, "there was something unnatural about Anna
Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said
angrily the day before yesterday: 'There, he will keep waiting
for you; he wouldn't drink his coffee without you, though he's
grown so dreadfully weak.'"
"Yes, perhaps, too, she didn't like it when I gave him the rug.
It was all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly, and was so
long thanking me, that I felt awkward too. And then that
portrait of me he did so well. And most of all that look of
confusion and tenderness! Yes, yes, that's it!" Kitty repeated
to herself with horror. "No, it can't be, it oughtn't to be!
He's so much to be pitied!" she said to herself directly after.
This doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.
Chapter 34
Before the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince
Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and
Kissingen to Russian friends--to get a breath of Russian air, as
he said--came back to his wife and daughter.
The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were
completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful,
and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she
tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she
was not--for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian
gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether
suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything
foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his
Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less
European than he was in reality.
The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags
on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His
good humor was even greater when he saw Kitty completely
recovered. The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and
Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of
change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused
his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his
daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have
got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible
to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea
of kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and
more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.
The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with
his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched
collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest
good humor.
It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their
little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed,
beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the
heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener
they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable
than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German
life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright
sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music
were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces,
with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for
which she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety
of the June morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay
waltz then in fashion, and above all, the appearance of the
healthy attendants, seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in
conjunction with these slowly moving, dying figures gathered
together from all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of
pride and, as it were, of the return of youth, with his favorite
daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his
vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost like a
man not dressed in a crowd.
"Present me to your new friends," he said to his daughter,
squeezing her hand with his elbow. "I like even your horrid
Soden for making you so well again. Only it's melancholy, very
melancholy here. Who's that?"
Kitty mentioned the names of all the people they met, with some
of whom she was acquainted and some not. At the entrance of the
garden they met the blind lady, Madame Berthe, with her guide,
and the prince was delighted to see the old Frenchwoman's face
light up when she heard Kitty's voice. She at once began talking
to him with French exaggerated politeness, applauding him for
having such a delightful daughter, extolling Kitty to the skies
before her face, and calling her a treasure, a pearl, and a
consoling angel.
"Well, she's the second angel, then," said the prince, smiling.
"she calls Mademoiselle Varenka angel number one."
"Oh! Mademoiselle Varenka, she's a real angel, allez," Madame
Berthe assented.
In the arcade they met Varenka herself. She was walking rapidly
towards them carrying an elegant red bag.
"Here is papa come," Kitty said to her.
Varenka made--simply and naturally as she did everything--a
movement between a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began
talking to the prince, without shyness, naturally, as she
talked to everyone.
"Of course I know you; I know you very well," the prince said
to her with a smile, in which Kitty detected with joy that her
father liked her friend. "Where are you off to in such haste?"
"Maman's here," she said, turning to Kitty. "She has not slept
all night, and the doctor advised her to go out. I'm taking her
her work."
"So that's angel number one?" said the prince when Varenka had
gone on.
Kitty saw that her father had meant to make fun of Varenka, but
that he could not do it because he liked her.
"Come, so we shall see all your friends," he went on, "even
Madame Stahl, if she deigns to recognize me."
"Why, did you know her, papa?" Kitty asked apprehensively,
catching the gleam of irony that kindled in the prince's eyes at
the mention of Madame Stahl.
"I used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she'd
joined the Pietists."
"What is a Pietist, papa?" asked Kitty, dismayed to find that
what she prized so highly in Madame Stahl had a name.
"I don't quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God
for everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God too that her
husband died. And that's rather droll, as they didn't get on
together."
"Who's that? What a piteous face!" he asked, noticing a sick man
of medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and
white trousers that fell in strange folds about his long,
fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat, showed his scanty
curly hair and high forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure
of the hat.
"That's Petrov, an artist," answered Kitty, blushing. "And
that's his wife," she added, indicating Anna Pavlovna, who, as
though on purpose, at the very instant they approached walked
away after a child that had run off along a path.
"Poor fellow! and what a nice face he has!" said the prince.
"Why don't you go up to him? He wanted to speak to you."
"Well, let us go, then," said Kitty, turning round resolutely.
"How are you feeling today?" she asked Petrov.
Petrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at the
prince.
"This is my daughter," said the prince. "Let me introduce
myself."
The painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely dazzling
white teeth.
"We expected you yesterday, princess," he said to Kitty. He
staggered as he said this, and then repeated the motion, trying
to make it seem as if it had been intentional.
"I meant to come, but Varenka said that Anna Pavlovna sent word
you were not going."
"Not going!" said Petrov, blushing, and immediately beginning to
cough, and his eyes sought his wife. "Anita! Anita!" he said
loudly, and the swollen veins stood out like cords on his thin
white neck.
Anna Pavlovna came up.
"So you sent word to the princess that we weren't going!" he
whispered to her angrily, losing his voice.
"Good morning, princess," said Anna Pavlovna, with an assumed
smile utterly unlike her former manner. "Very glad to make your
acquaintance," she said to the prince. "You've long been
expected, prince."
"What did you send word to the princess that we weren't going
for?" the artist whispered hoarsely once more, still more
angrily, obviously exasperated that his voice failed him so that
he could not give his words the expression he would have liked
to.
"Oh, mercy on us! I thought we weren't going," his wife answered
crossly.
"What, when...." He coughed and waved his hand. The prince took
off his hat and moved away with his daughter.
"Ah! ah!" he sighed deeply. "Oh, poor things!"
"Yes, papa," answered Kitty. "And you must know they've three
children, no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something
from the Academy," she went on briskly, trying to drown the
distress that the queer change in Anna Pavlovna's manner to her
had aroused in her.
"Oh, here's Madame Stahl," said Kitty, indicating an invalid
carriage, where, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue
was lying under a sunshade. This was Madame Stahl. Behind her
stood the gloomy, healthy-looking German workman who pushed the
carriage. Close by was standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count,
whom Kitty knew by name. Several invalids were lingering near
the low carriage, staring at the lady as though she were some
curiosity.
The prince went up to her, and Kitty detected that disconcerting
gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Stahl, and
addressed her with extreme courtesy and affability in that
excellent French that so few speak nowadays.
"I don't know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to
thank you for your kindness to my daughter," he said, taking off
his hat and not putting it on again.
"Prince Alexander Shtcherbatsky," said Madame Stahl, lifting upon
him her heavenly eyes, in which Kitty discerned a look of
annoyance. "Delighted! I have taken a great fancy to your
daughter."
"You are still in weak health?"
"Yes; I'm used to it," said Madame Stahl, and she introduced the
prince to the Swedish count.
"You are scarcely changed at all," the prince said to her. "It's
ten or eleven years since I had the honor of seeing you."
"Yes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it.
Often one wonders what is the goal of this life?... The other
side!" she said angrily to Varenka, who had rearranged the rug
over her feet not to her satisfaction.
"To do good, probably," said the prince with a twinkle in his
eye.
"That is not for us to judge," said Madame Stahl, perceiving the
shade of expression on the prince's face. "So you will send me
that book, dear count? I'm very grateful to you," she said to
the young Swede.
"Ah!" cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow colonel
standing near, and with a bow to Madame Stahl he walked away with
his daughter and the Moscow colonel, who joined them.
"That's our aristocracy, prince!" the Moscow colonel said with
ironical intention. He cherished a grudge against Madame Stahl
for not making his acquaintance.
"She's just the same," replied the prince.
"Did you know her before her illness, prince--that's to say
before she took to her bed?"
"Yes. She took to her bed before my eyes," said the prince.
"They say it's ten years since she has stood on her feet."
"She doesn't stand up because her legs are too short. She's a
very bad figure."
"Papa, it's not possible!" cried Kitty.
"That's what wicked tongues say, my darling. And your Varenka
catches it too," he added. "Oh, these invalid ladies!"
"Oh, no, papa!" Kitty objected warmly. "Varenka worships her.
And then she does so much good! Ask anyone! Everyone knows her
and Aline Stahl."
"Perhaps so," said the prince, squeezing her hand with his elbow;
"but it's better when one does good so that you may ask everyone
and no one knows."
Kitty did not answer, not because she had nothing to say, but
because she did not care to reveal her secret thoughts even to
her father. But, strange to say, although she had so made up her
mind not to be influenced by her father's views, not to let him
into her inmost sanctuary, she felt that the heavenly image of
Madame Stahl, which she had carried for a whole month in her
heart, had vanished, never to return, just as the fantastic
figure made up of some clothes thrown down at random vanishes
when one sees that it is only some garment lying there. All that
was left was a woman with short legs, who lay down because she
had a bad figure, and worried patient Varenka for not arranging
her rug to her liking. And by no effort of the imagination could
Kitty bring back the former Madame Stahl.
Chapter 35
The prince communicated his good humor to his own family and his
friends, and even to the German landlord in whose rooms the
Shtcherbatskys were staying.
On coming back with Kitty from the springs, the prince, who had
asked the colonel, and Marya Yevgenyevna, and Varenka all to come
and have coffee with them, gave orders for a table and chairs to
be taken into the garden under the chestnut tree, and lunch to be
laid there. The landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker
under the influence of his good spirits. They knew his
open-handedness; and half an hour later the invalid doctor from
Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked enviously out of the
window at the merry party of healthy Russians assembled under the
chestnut tree. In the trembling circles of shadow cast by the
leaves, at a table, covered with a white cloth, and set with
coffeepot, bread-and-butter, cheese, and cold game, sat the
princess in a high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and
bread-and-butter. At the other end sat the prince, eating
heartily, and talking loudly and merrily. The prince had spread
out near him his purchases, carved boxes, and knick-knacks,
paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap at every
watering-place, and bestowed them upon everyone, including
Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord, with whom he jested
in his comically bad German, assuring him that it was not the
water had cured Kitty, but his splendid cookery, especially his
plum soup. The princess laughed at her husband for his Russian
ways, but she was more lively and good-humored than she had been
all the while she had been at the waters. The colonel smiled, as
he always did, at the prince's jokes, but as far as regards
Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a careful
study, he took the princess's side. The simple-hearted Marya
Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter at everything absurd the
prince said, and his jokes made Varenka helpless with feeble but
infectious laughter, which was something Kitty had never seen
before.
Kitty was glad of all this, but she could not be light-hearted.
She could not solve the problem her father had unconsciously set
her by his goodhumored view of her friends, and of the life that
had so attracted her. To this doubt there was joined the change
in her relations with the Petrovs, which had been so
conspicuously and unpleasantly marked that morning. Everyone was
good humored, but Kitty could not feel good humored, and this
increased her distress. She felt a feeling such as she had known
in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a punishment,
and had heard her sisters' merry laughter outside.
"Well, but what did you buy this mass of things for?" said the
princess, smiling, and handing her husband a cup of coffee.
"One goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask you to buy.
'_Erlaucht, Durchlaucht?_' Directly they say '_Durchlaucht_,' I
can't hold out. I lose ten thalers."
"It's simply from boredom," said the princess.
"Of course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one doesn't know
what to do with oneself."
"How can you be bored, prince? There's so much that's interesting
now in Germany," said Marya Yevgenyevna.
"But I know everything that's interesting: the plum soup I know,
and the pea sausages I know. I know everything."
"No, you may say what you like, prince, there's the interest of
their institutions," said the colonel.
"But what is there interesting about it? They're all as pleased
as brass halfpence. They've conquered everybody, and why am I
to be pleased at that? I haven't conquered anyone; and I'm
obliged to take off my own boots, yes, and put them away too; in
the morning, get up and dress at once, and go to the dining room
to drink bad tea! How different it is at home! You get up in no
haste, you get cross, grumble a little, and come round again.
You've time to think things over, and no hurry."
"But time's money, you forget that," said the colonel.
"Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there's time one would give a
month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn't give half an hour of
for any money. Isn't that so, Katinka? What is it? why are you
so depressed?"
"I'm not depressed."
"Where are you off to? Stay a little longer," he said to
Varenka.
"I must be going home," said Varenka, getting up, and again she
went off into a giggle. When she had recovered, she said
good-bye, and went into the house to get her hat.
Kitty followed her. Even Varenka struck her as different. She
was not worse, but different from what she had fancied her
before.
"Oh, dear! it's a long while since I've laughed so much!" said
Varenka, gathering up her parasol and her bag. "How nice he is,
your father!"
Kitty did not speak.
"When shall I see you again?" asked Varenka.
"Mamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won't you be there?"
said Kitty, to try Varenka.
"Yes," answered Varenka. "They're getting ready to go away, so
I promised to help them pack."
"Well, I'll come too, then."
"No, why should you?"
"Why not? why not? why not?" said Kitty, opening her eyes wide,
and clutching at Varenka's parasol, so as not to let her go.
"No, wait a minute; why not?"
"Oh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they will feel
awkward at your helping."
"No, tell me why you don't want me to be often at the Petrovs'.
You don't want me to--why not?"
"I didn't say that," said Varenka quietly.
"No, please tell me!"
"Tell you everything?" asked Varenka.
"Everything, everything!" Kitty assented.
"Well, there's really nothing of any consequence; only that
Mihail Alexeyevitch" (that was the artist's name) "had meant to
leave earlier, and now he doesn't want to go away," said Varenka,
smiling.
"Well, well!" Kitty urged impatiently, looking darkly at Varenka.
"Well, and for some reason Anna Pavlovna told him that he didn't
want to go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense;
but there was a dispute over it--over you. You know how
irritable these sick people are."
Kitty, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Varenka went on
speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a
storm coming--she did not know whether of tears or of words.
"So you'd better not go.... You understand; you won't be
offended?..."
"And it serves me right! And it serves me right!" Kitty cried
quickly, snatching the parasol out of Varenka's hand, and looking
past her friend's face.
Varenka felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish fury, but
she was afraid of wounding her.
"How does it serve you right? I don't understand," she said.
"It serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all
done on purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to
interfere with outsiders? And so it's come about that I'm a
cause of quarrel, and that I've done what nobody asked me to do.
Because it was all a sham! a sham! a sham!..."
"A sham! with what object?" said Varenka gently.
"Oh, it's so idiotic! so hateful! There was no need whatever for
me.... Nothing but sham!" she said, opening and shutting the
parasol.
"But with what object?"
"To seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive
everyone. No! now I won't descend to that. I'll be bad; but
anyway not a liar, a cheat."
"But who is a cheat?" said Varenka reproachfully. "You speak as
if..."
But Kitty was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let
her finish.
"I don't talk about you, not about you at all. You're
perfection. Yes, yes, I know you're all perfection; but what am
I to do if I'm bad? This would never have been if I weren't bad.
So let me be what I am. I won't be a sham. What have I to do
with Anna Pavlovna? Let them go their way, and me go mine. I
can't be different.... And yet it's not that, it's not that."
"What is not that?" asked Varenka in bewilderment.
"Everything. I can't act except from the heart, and you act
from principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely only
wanted to save me, to improve me."
"You are unjust," said Varenka.
"But I'm not speaking of other people, I'm speaking of myself."
"Kitty," they heard her mother's voice, "come here, show papa
your necklace."
Kitty, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend,
took the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her
mother.
"What's the matter? Why are you so red?" her mother and father
said to her with one voice.
"Nothing," she answered. "I'll be back directly," and she ran
back.
"She's still here," she thought. "What am I to say to her? Oh,
dear! what have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to
her? What am I to do? What am I to say to her?" thought Kitty,
and she stopped in the doorway.
Varenka in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting
at the table examining the spring which Kitty had broken. She
lifted her head.
"Varenka, forgive me, do forgive me," whispered Kitty, going up
to her. "I don't remember what I said. I..."
"I really didn't mean to hurt you," said Varenka, smiling.
Peace was made. But with her father's coming all the world in
which she had been living was transformed for Kitty. She did not
give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she
had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to
be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the
difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and
self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount.
Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of
sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living.
The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable,
and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to
Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister
Dolly had already gone with her children.
But her affection for Varenka did not wane. As she said
good-bye, Kitty begged her to come to them in Russia.
"I'll come when you get married," said Varenka.
"I shall never marry."
"Well, then, I shall never come."
"Well, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now,
remember your promise," said Kitty.
The doctor's prediction was fulfilled. Kitty returned home to
Russia cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but
she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.
PART THREE
Chapter 1
Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and
instead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the
end of May to stay in the country with his brother. In his
judgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had come
now to enjoy such a life at his brother's. Konstantin Levin was
very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his
brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and
respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was uncomfortable
with his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, and
it positively annoyed him to see his brother's attitude to the
country. To Konstantin Levin the country was the background of
life, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To Sergey
Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the
other a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town,
which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To
Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a
field for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be no
doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good,
because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing.
Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch's attitude to the peasants rather
piqued Konstantin. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew
and liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants,
which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and
from every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions
in favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing
them. Konstantin Levin did not like such an attitude to the
peasants. To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner
in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the
love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant--
sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his
peasant nurse--still as a fellow-worker with him, while
sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of
these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for
other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his
carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had
been asked whether he liked or didn't like the peasants,
Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to
reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked
and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted
man, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with
the peasants. But like or dislike "the people" as something
apart he could not, not only because he lived with "the people,"
and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because
he regarded himself as a part of "the people," did not see any
special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and "the
people," and could not contrast himself with them. Moreover,
although he had lived so long in the closest relations with the
peasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser
(the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round they would
come to ask his advice), he had no definite views of "the
people," and would have been as much at a loss to answer the
question whether he knew "the people" as the question whether he
liked them. For him to say he knew the peasantry would have been
the same as to say he knew men. He was continually watching and
getting to know people of all sorts, and among them peasants,
whom he regarded as good and interesting people, and he was
continually observing new points in them, altering his former
views of them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it
was quite the contrary. Just as he liked and praised a country
life in comparison with the life he did not like, so too he liked
the peasantry in contradistinction to the class of men he did not
like, and so too he knew the peasantry as something distinct from
and opposed to men generally. In his methodical brain there were
distinctly formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced
partly from that life itself, but chiefly from contrast with
other modes of life. He never changed his opinion of the
peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.
In the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views
of the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his
brother, precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas
about the peasant--his character, his qualities, and his tastes.
Konstantin Levin had no definite and unalterable idea on the
subject, and so in their arguments Konstantin was readily
convicted of contradicting himself.
In Sergey Ivanovitch's eyes his younger brother was a capital
fellow, _with his heart in the right place_ (as he expressed it in
French), but with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much
influenced by the impressions of the moment, and consequently
filled with contradictions. With all the condescension of an
elder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of
things, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with him
because he got the better of him too easily.
Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of immense
intellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of the
word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the
public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he
became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and
more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of
working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly
devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something
--not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a
lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse
which drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerable
paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew
his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many
other people who worked for the public welfare, were not led by
an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned
from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to
take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest
in them. Levin was confirmed in this generalization by observing
that his brother did not take questions affecting the public
welfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more
to heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious
construction of a new machine.
Besides this, Konstantin Levin was not at his ease with his
brother, because in summer in the country Levin was continually
busy with work on the land, and the long summer day was not long
enough for him to get through all he had to do, while Sergey
Ivanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking a
holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was so
used to intellectual activity that he liked to put into concise
and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to
have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural
listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness
and directness of their relations, Konstantin felt an awkwardness
in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself
on the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting
lazily.
"You wouldn't believe," he would say to his brother, "what a
pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's
brain, as empty as a drum!"
But Konstantin Levin found it dull sitting and listening to him,
especially when he knew that while he was away they would be
carting dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, and
heaping it all up anyhow; and would not screw the shares in the
ploughs, but would let them come off and then say that the new
ploughs were a silly invention, and there was nothing like the
old Andreevna plough, and so on.
"Come, you've done enough trudging about in the heat," Sergey
Ivanovitch would say to him.
"No, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute,"
Levin would answer, and he would run off to the fields.
Chapter 2
Early in June it happened that Agafea Mihalovna, the old nurse
and housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she
had just pickled, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The
district doctor, a talkative young medical student, who had just
finished his studies, came to see her. He examined the wrist,
said it was not broken, was delighted at a chance of talking to
the celebrated Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, and to show his
advanced views of things told him all the scandal of the
district, complaining of the poor state into which the district
council had fallen. Sergey Ivanovitch listened attentively,
asked him questions, and, roused by a new listener, he talked
fluently, uttered a few keen and weighty observations,
respectfully appreciated by the young doctor, and was soon in
that eager frame of mind his brother knew so well, which always,
with him, followed a brilliant and eager conversation. After the
departure of the doctor, he wanted to go with a fishing rod to
the river. Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling, and was, it
seemed, proud of being able to care for such a stupid occupation.
Konstantin Levin, whose presence was needed in the plough land
and meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.
It was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when
the crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to
think of the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand;
when the rye is all in ear, though its ears are still light, not
yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the wind; when
the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and
there among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when
the early buckwheat is already out and hiding the ground; when
the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle, are
half ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the plough; when
from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes at
sunset a smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the
low-lying lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass
waiting for the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of
sorrel among it.
It was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the
fields before the beginning of the labors of harvest--every year
recurring, every year straining every nerve of the peasants. The
crop was a splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in
with short, dewy nights.
The brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows.
Sergey Ivanovitch was all the while admiring the beauty of the
woods, which were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his
brother now an old lime tree on the point of flowering, dark on
the shady side, and brightly spotted with yellow stipules, now
the young shoots of this year's saplings brilliant with emerald.
Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the
beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he
saw. He assented to what his brother said, but he could not help
beginning to think of other things. When they came out of the
woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the
fallow land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts
trampled and checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges
of dung, and in parts even ploughed. A string of carts was
moving across it. Levin counted the carts, and was pleased that
all that were wanted had been brought, and at the sight of the
meadows his thoughts passed to the mowing. He always felt
something special moving him to the quick at the hay-making. On
reaching the meadow Levin stopped the horse.
The morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the
grass, and that he might not get his feet wet, Sergey Ivanovitch
asked his brother to drive him in the trap up to the willow tree
from which the carp was caught. Sorry as Konstantin Levin was to
crush down his mowing grass, he drove him into the meadow. The
high grass softly turned about the wheels and the horse's legs,
leaving its seeds clinging to the wet axles and spokes of the
wheels. His brother seated himself under a bush, arranging his
tackle, while Levin led the horse away, fastened him up, and
walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by the
wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his
waist in the dampest spots.
Crossing the meadow, Konstantin Levin came out onto the road, and
met an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a skep on his
shoulder.
"What? taken a stray swarm, Fomitch?" he asked.
"No, indeed, Konstantin Dmitrich! All we can do to keep our own!
This is the second swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the
lads caught them. They were ploughing your field. They unyoked
the horses and galloped after them."
"Well, what do you say, Fomitch--start mowing or wait a bit?"
"Eh, well. Our way's to wait till St. Peter's Day. But you
always mow sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay's good.
There'll be plenty for the beasts."
"What do you think about the weather?"
"That's in God's hands. Maybe it will be fine."
Levin went up to his brother.
Sergey Ivanovitch had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and
seemed in the most cheerful frame of mind. Levin saw that,
stimulated by his conversation with the doctor, he wanted to
talk. Levin, on the other hand, would have liked to get home as
soon as possible to give orders about getting together the mowers
for next day, and to set at rest his doubts about the mowing,
which greatly absorbed him.
"Well, let's be going," he said.
"Why be in such a hurry? Let's stay a little. But how wet you
are! Even though one catches nothing, it's nice. That's the
best thing about every part of sport, that one has to do with
nature. How exquisite this steely water is!" said Sergey
Ivanovitch. "These riverside banks always remind me of the
riddle--do you know it? 'The grass says to the water: we
quiver and we quiver.'"
"I don't know the riddle," answered Levin wearily.
Chapter 3
"Do you know, I've been thinking about you," said Sergey
Ivanovitch. "It's beyond everything what's being done in the
district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very
intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you
again: it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and
altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent
people won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong.
We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no
schools, nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores--
nothing."
"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly.
"I can't! and so there's no help for it."
"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out.
Indifference, incapacity--I won't admit; surely it's not simply
laziness?"
"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing,"
said Levin.
He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking
towards the plough land across the river, he made out something
black, but he could not distinguish whether it was a horse or the
bailiff on horseback.
"Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn't
succeed, as you think, and you give in. How can you have so
little self-respect?"
"Self-respect!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother's
words; "I don't understand. If they'd told me at college that
other people understood the integral calculus, and I didn't,
then pride would have come in. But in this case one wants first
to be convinced that one has certain qualifications for this sort
of business, and especially that all this business is of great
importance."
"What! do you mean to say it's not of importance?" said Sergey
Ivanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother's considering
anything of no importance that interested him, and still more at
his obviously paying little attention to what he was saying.
"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me, I
can't help it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw was
the bailiff, and that the bailiff seemed to be letting the
peasants go off the ploughed land. They were turning the plough
over. "Can they have finished ploughing?" he wondered.
"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown on
his handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It's
very well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything
conventional--I know all about that; but really, what you're
saying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning.
How can you think it a matter of no importance whether the
peasant, whom you love as you assert..."
"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin.
"...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the
children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless
in the hands of every village clerk, while you have at your
disposal a means of helping them, and don't help them because to
your mind it's of no importance."
And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you
are so undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you
won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do
it.
Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to
submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And
this mortified him and hurt his feelings.
"It's both," he said resolutely: "I don't see that it was
possible..."
"What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to
provide medical aid?"
"Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand square
miles of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and
the work in the fields, I don't see how it is possible to
provide medical aid all over. And besides, I don't believe in
medicine."
"Oh, well, that's unfair...I can quote to you thousands of
instances.... But the schools, anyway."
"Why have schools?"
"What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of
education? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing for
everyone."
Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and
so he got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of
his indifference to public business.
"Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself
about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of,
and schools to which I shall never send my children, to which
even the peasants don't want to send their children, and to which
I've no very firm faith that they ought to send them?" said he.
Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected
view of the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack.
He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again,
and turned to his brother smiling.
"Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We
ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna."
"Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again."
"That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read
and write is as a workman of more use and value to you."
"No, you can ask anyone you like," Konstantin Levin answered
with decision, "the man that can read and write is much inferior
as a workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and
as soon as they put up bridges they're stolen."
"Still, that's not the point," said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.
He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were
continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new
and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to
reply. "Do you admit that education is a benefit for the
people?"
"Yes, I admit it," said Levin without thinking, and he was
conscious immediately that he had said what he did not think. He
felt that if he admitted that, it would be proved that he had
been talking meaningless rubbish. How it would be proved he
could not tell, but he knew that this would inevitably be
logically proved to him, and he awaited the proofs.
The argument turned out to be far simpler than he had expected.
"If you admit that it is a benefit," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
"then, as an honest man, you cannot help caring about it and
sympathizing with the movement, and so wishing to work for it."
"But I still do not admit this movement to be just," said
Konstantin Levin, reddening a little.
"What! But you said just now..."
"That's to say, I don't admit it's being either good or
possible."
"That you can't tell without making the trial."
"Well, supposing that's so," said Levin, though he did not
suppose so at all, "supposing that is so, still I don't see, all
the same, what I'm to worry myself about it for."
"How so?"
"No; since we are talking, explain it to me from the
philosophical point of view," said Levin.
"I can't see where philosophy comes in," said Sergey Ivanovitch,
in a tone, Levin fancied, as though he did not admit his
brother's right to talk about philosophy. And that irritated
Levin.
"I'll tell you, then," he said with heat, "I imagine the
mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now
in the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that
could conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not better and
could not be better; my horses carry me well enough over bad
ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to me. An arbitrator
of disputes is no use to me. I never appeal to him, and never
shall appeal to him. The schools are no good to me, but
positively harmful, as I told you. For me the district
institutions simply mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpenny
for every three acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs,
and listen to all sorts of idiocy and loathsomeness, and
self-interest offers me no inducement."
"Excuse me," Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile,
"self-interest did not induce us to work for the emancipation of
the serfs, but we did work for it."
"No!" Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; "the
emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There
self-interest did come in. One longed to throw off that yoke
that crushed us, all decent people among us. But to be a
town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how
chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don't
live--to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitch
of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of
jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and
the president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do
you admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the
bacon?' 'Eh?'"
Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking
the president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that
it was all to the point.
But Sergey Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, what do you mean to say, then?"
"I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me...my
interest, I shall always defend to the best of my ability; that
when they made raids on us students, and the police read our
letters, I was ready to defend those rights to the utmost, to
defend my rights to education and freedom. I can understand
compulsory military service, which affects my children, my
brothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what concerns
me; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles of
district council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka--I
don't understand, and I can't do it."
Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had
burst open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.
"But tomorrow it'll be your turn to be tried; would it have
suited your tastes better to be tried in the old criminal
tribunal?"
"I'm not going to be tried. I shan't murder anybody, and I've
no need of it. Well, I tell you what," he went on, flying off
again to a subject quite beside the point, "our district
self-government and all the rest of it--it's just like the
birch branches we stick in the ground on Trinity Day, for
instance, to look like a copse which has grown up of itself in
Europe, and I can't gush over these birch branches and believe
in them."
Sergey Ivanovitch merely shrugged his shoulders, as though to
express his wonder how the birch branches had come into their
argument at that point, though he did really understand at once
what his brother meant.
"Excuse me, but you know one really can't argue in that way," he
observed.
But Konstantin Levin wanted to justify himself for the failing,
of which he was conscious, of lack of zeal for the public
welfare, and he went on.
"I imagine," he said, "that no sort of activity is likely to be
lasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that's a universal
principle, a philosophical principle," he said, repeating the
word "philosophical" with determination, as though wishing to
show that he had as much right as any one else to talk of
philosophy.
Sergey Ivanovitch smiled. "He too has a philosophy of his own at
the service of his natural tendencies," he thought.
"Come, you'd better let philosophy alone," he said. "The chief
problem of the philosophy of all ages consists just in finding
the indispensable connection which exists between individual and
social interests. But that's not to the point; what is to the
point is a correction I must make in your comparison. The
birches are not simply stuck in, but some are sown and some are
planted, and one must deal carefully with them. It's only those
peoples that have an intuitive sense of what's of importance and
significance in their institutions, and know how to value them,
that have a future before them--it's only those peoples that one
can truly call historical."
And Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions of
philosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not follow
him, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.
"As for your dislike of it, excuse my saying so, that's simply
our Russian sloth and old serf-owner's ways, and I'm convinced
that in you it's a temporary error and will pass."
Konstantin was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides,
but he felt at the same time that what he wanted to say was
unintelligible to his brother. Only he could not make up his
mind whether it was unintelligible because he was not capable of
expressing his meaning clearly, or because his brother would not
or could not understand him. But he did not pursue the
speculation, and without replying, he fell to musing on a quite
different and personal matter.
Sergey Ivanovitch wound up the last line, untied the horse, and
they drove off.
Chapter 4
The personal matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation
with his brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone
to look at the mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff
he had recourse to his favorite means for regaining his temper,--
he took a scythe from a peasant and began mowing.
He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his
hand at mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in
front of his house, and this year ever since the early spring he
had cherished a plan for mowing for whole days together with the
peasants. Ever since his brother's arrival, he had been in doubt
whether to mow or not. He was loath to leave his brother alone
all day long, and he was afraid his brother would laugh at him
about it. But as he drove into the meadow, and recalled the
sensations of mowing, he came near deciding that he would go
mowing. After the irritating discussion with his brother, he
pondered over this intention again.
"I must have physical exercise, or my temper'll certainly be
ruined," he thought, and he determined he would go mowing,
however awkward he might feel about it with his brother or the
peasants.
Towards evening Konstantin Levin went to his counting house, gave
directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village
to summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov
meadow, the largest and best of his grass lands.
"And send my scythe, please, to Tit, for him to set it, and bring
it round tomorrow. I shall maybe do some mowing myself too," he
said, trying not to be embarrassed.
The bailiff smiled and said: "Yes, sir."
At tea the same evening Levin said to his brother:
"I fancy the fine weather will last. Tomorrow I shall start
mowing."
"I'm so fond of that form of field labor," said Sergey
Ivanovitch.
"I'm awfully fond of it. I sometimes mow myself with the
peasants, and tomorrow I want to try mowing the whole day."
Sergey Ivanovitch lifted his head, and looked with interest at
his brother.
"How do you mean? Just like one of the peasants, all day long?"
"Yes, it's very pleasant," said Levin.
"It's splendid as exercise, only you'll hardly be able to stand
it," said Sergey Ivanovitch, without a shade of irony.
"I've tried it. It's hard work at first, but you get into it.
I dare say I shall manage to keep it up..."
"Really! what an idea! But tell me, how do the peasants look at
it? I suppose they laugh in their sleeves at their master's
being such a queer fish?"
"No, I don't think so; but it's so delightful, and at the same
time such hard work, that one has no time to think about it."
"But how will you do about dining with them? To send you a
bottle of Lafitte and roast turkey out there would be a little
awkward."
"No, I'll simply come home at the time of their noonday rest."
Next morning Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he
was detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached
the mowing grass the mowers were already at their second row.
From the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of
the meadow below, with its grayish ridges of cut grass, and the
black heaps of coats, taken off by the mowers at the place from
which they had started cutting.
Gradually, as he rode towards the meadow, the peasants came into
sight, some in coats, some in their shirts mowing, one behind
another in a long string, swinging their scythes differently. He
counted forty-two of them.
They were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the
meadow, where there had been an old dam. Levin recognized some
of his own men. Here was old Yermil in a very long white smock,
bending forward to swing a scythe; there was a young fellow,
Vaska, who had been a coachman of Levin's, taking every row with
a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, Levin's preceptor in the art
of mowing, a thin little peasant. He was in front of all, and
cut his wide row without bending, as though playing with the
scythe.
Levin got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went
to meet Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it
to him.
"It's ready, sir; it's like a razor, cuts of itself," said Tit,
taking off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe.
Levin took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished
their rows, the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the
road one after another, and, laughing a little, greeted the
master. They all stared at him, but no one made any remark, till
a tall old man, with a wrinkled, beardless face, wearing a short
sheepskin jacket, came out into the road and accosted him.
"Look'ee now, master, once take hold of the rope there's no
letting it go!" he said, and Levin heard smothered laughter among
the mowers.
"I'll try not to let it go," he said, taking his stand behind
Tit, and waiting for the time to begin.
"Mind'ee," repeated the old man.
Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short
close to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a
long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him,
cut badly for the first moments, though he swung his scythe
vigorously. Behind him he heard voices:
"It's not set right; handle's too high; see how he has to stoop
to it," said one.
"Press more on the heel," said another.
"Never mind, he'll get on all right," the old man resumed.
"He's made a start.... You swing it too wide, you'll tire
yourself out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself!
But see the grass missed out! For such work us fellows would
catch it!"
The grass became softer, and Levin, listening without answering,
followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a
hundred paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing
the slightest weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be
afraid he would not be able to keep it up: he was so tired.
He felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his
strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at
that very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and stooping down
picked up some grass, rubbed his scythe, and began whetting it.
Levin straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked
round. Behind him came a peasant, and he too was evidently
tired, for he stopped at once without waiting to mow up to Levin,
and began whetting his scythe. Tit sharpened his scythe and
Levin's, and they went on. The next time it was just the same.
Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his scythe, not stopping
nor showing signs of weariness. Levin followed him, trying not to
get left behind, and he found it harder and harder: the moment
came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very
moment Tit stopped and whetted the scythes.
So they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed
particularly hard work to Levin; but when the end was reached and
Tit, shouldering his scythe, began with deliberate stride
returning on the tracks left by his heels in the cut grass, and
Levin walked back in the same way over the space he had cut, in
spite of the sweat that ran in streams over his face and fell in
drops down his nose, and drenched his back as though he had been
soaked in water, he felt very happy. What delighted him
particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out.
His pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut.
"I will swing less with my arm and more with my whole body," he
thought, comparing Tit's row, which looked as if it had been cut
with a line, with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.
The first row, as Levin noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly,
probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row
happened to be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still
Levin had to strain every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.
He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left
behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He
heard nothing but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit's
upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut
grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling
before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the
row, where would come the rest.
Suddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it
was or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on
his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval
for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had
blown up, and big raindrops were falling. Some of the peasants
went to their coats and put them on; others--just like Levin
himself--merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant
coolness of it.
Another row, and yet another row, followed--long rows and short
rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense
of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early
now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him
immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were
moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all
easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as
smooth and well cut as Tit's. But so soon as he recollected what
he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once
conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was
badly mown.
On finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top
of the meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going
up to the old man said something in a low voice to him. They
both looked at the sun. "What are they talking about, and why
doesn't he go back?" thought Levin, not guessing that the
peasants had been mowing no less than four hours without
stopping, and it was time for their lunch.
"Lunch, sir," said the old man.
"Is it really time? That's right; lunch, then."
Levin gave his scythe to Tit, and together with the peasants, who
were crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled
with rain, to get their bread from the heap of coats, he went
towards his house. Only then he suddenly awoke to the fact that
he had been wrong about the weather and the rain was drenching
his hay.
"The hay will be spoiled," he said.
"Not a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you'll rake in fine
weather!" said the old man.
Levin untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. Sergey
Ivanovitch was only just getting up. When he had drunk his
coffee, Levin rode back again to the mowing before Sergey
Ivanovitch had had time to dress and come down to the
dining room.
Chapter 5
After lunch Levin was not in the same place in the string of
mowers as before, but stood between the old man who had accosted
him jocosely, and now invited him to be his neighbor, and a young
peasant, who had only been married in the autumn, and who was
mowing this summer for the first time.
The old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet
turned out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and
regular action which seemed to cost him no more effort than
swinging one's arms in walking, as though it were in play, he
laid down the high, even row of grass. It was as though it were
not he but the sharp scythe of itself swishing through the juicy
grass.
Behind Levin came the lad Mishka. His pretty, boyish face, with
a twist of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with
effort; but whenever anyone looked at him he smiled. He would
clearly have died sooner than own it was hard work for him.
Levin kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing
did not seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which
he was drenched cooled him, while the sun, that burned his back,
his head, and his arms, bare to the elbow, gave a vigor and
dogged energy to his labor; and more and more often now came
those moments of unconsciousness, when it was possible not to
think what one was doing. The scythe cut of itself. These were
happy moments. Still more delightful were the moments when they
reached the stream where the rows ended, and the old man rubbed
his scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in
the fresh water of the stream, ladled out a little in a tin
dipper, and offered Levin a drink.
"What do you say to my home-brew, eh? Good, eh?" said he,
winking.
And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this warm
water with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from
the tin dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious,
slow saunter, with his hand on the scythe, during which he could
wipe away the streaming sweat, take deep breaths of air, and look
about at the long string of mowers and at what was happening
around in the forest and the country.
The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of
unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the
scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and
consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without
thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of
itself. These were the most blissful moments.
It was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which
had become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a
hillock or a tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When
a hillock came he changed his action, and at one time with the
heel, and at another with the tip of his scythe, clipped the
hillock round both sides with short strokes. And while he did
this he kept looking about and watching what came into his view:
at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or offered it to
Levin, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the scythe,
then he looked at a quail's nest, from which the bird flew just
under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and
lifting it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Levin
and threw it away.
For both Levin and the young peasant behind him, such changes of
position were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over
again the same strained movement, were in a perfect frenzy of
toil, and were incapable of shifting their position and at the
same time watching what was before them.
Levin did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked
how long he had been working he would have said half an hour--
and it was getting on for dinner time. As they were walking back
over the cut grass, the old man called Levin's attention to the
little girls and boys who were coming from different directions,
hardly visible through the long grass, and along the road towards
the mowers, carrying sacks of bread dragging at their little
hands and pitchers of the sour rye-beer, with cloths wrapped
round them.
"Look'ee, the little emmets crawling!" he said, pointing to them,
and he shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. They
mowed two more rows; the old man stopped.
"Come, master, dinner time!" he said briskly. And on reaching
the stream the mowers moved off across the lines of cut grass
towards their pile of coats, where the children who had brought
their dinners were sitting waiting for them. The peasants
gathered into groups--those further away under a cart, those
nearer under a willow bush.
Levin sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away.
All constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The
peasants got ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads
bathed in the stream, others made a place comfortable for a rest,
untied their sacks of bread, and uncovered the pitchers of
rye-beer. The old man crumbled up some bread in a cup, stirred
it with the handle of a spoon, poured water on it from the
dipper, broke up some more bread, and having seasoned it with
salt, he turned to the east to say his prayer.
"Come, master, taste my sop," said he, kneeling down before the
cup.
The sop was so good that Levin gave up the idea of going home.
He dined with the old man, and talked to him about his family
affairs, taking the keenest interest in them, and told him about
his own affairs and all the circumstances that could be of
interest to the old man. He felt much nearer to him than to his
brother, and could not help smiling at the affection he felt for
this man. When the old man got up again, said his prayer, and
lay down under a bush, putting some grass under his head for a
pillow, Levin did the same, and in spite of the clinging flies
that were so persistent in the sunshine, and the midges that
tickled his hot face and body, he fell asleep at once and only
waked when the sun had passed to the other side of the bush and
reached him. The old man had been awake a long while, and was
sitting up whetting the scythes of the younger lads.
Levin looked about him and hardly recognized the place,
everything was so changed. The immense stretch of meadow had
been mown and was sparkling with a peculiar fresh brilliance,
with its lines of already sweet-smelling grass in the slanting
rays of the evening sun. And the bushes about the river had been
cut down, and the river itself, not visible before, now gleaming
like steel in its bends, and the moving, ascending, peasants, and
the sharp wall of grass of the unmown part of the meadow, and the
hawks hovering over the stripped meadow--all was perfectly new.
Raising himself, Levin began considering how much had been cut
and how much more could still be done that day.
The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two men. They had
cut the whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of serf
labor, taken thirty scythes two days to mow. Only the corners
remained to do, where the rows were short. But Levin felt a
longing to get as much mowing done that day as possible, and was
vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky. He felt no
weariness; all he wanted was to get his work done more and more
quickly and as much done as possible.
"Could you cut Mashkin Upland too?--what do you think?" he said
to the old man.
"As God wills, the sun's not high. A little vodka for the lads?"
At the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, and
those who smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the
men that "Mashkin Upland's to be cut--there'll be some vodka."
"Why not cut it? Come on, Tit! We'll look sharp! We can eat at
night. Come on!" cried voices, and eating up their bread, the
mowers went back to work.
"Come, lads, keep it up!" said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a
trot.
"Get along, get along!" said the old man, hurrying after him and
easily overtaking him, "I'll mow you down, look out!"
And young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one
another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the
grass, and the rows were laid just as neatly and exactly. The
little piece left uncut in the corner was mown in five minutes.
The last of the mowers were just ending their rows while the
foremost snatched up their coats onto their shoulders, and
crossed the road towards Mashkin Upland.
The sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with
their jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland.
The grass was up to their waists in the middle of the hollow,
soft, tender, and feathery, spotted here and there among the
trees with wild heart's-ease.
After a brief consultation--whether to take the rows lengthwise
or diagonally--Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge,
black-haired peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top,
turned back again and started mowing, and they all proceeded to
form in line behind him, going downhill through the hollow and
uphill right up to the edge of the forest. The sun sank behind
the forest. The dew was falling by now; the mowers were in the
sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and
on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade. The
work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at
once laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides,
brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another
on to the sound of jingling dippers and clanging scythes, and the
hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.
Levin still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The
old man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as
good-humored, jocose, and free in his movements. Among the trees
they were continually cutting with their scythes the so-called
"birch mushrooms," swollen fat in the succulent grass. But the
old man bent down every time he came across a mushroom, picked it
up and put it in his bosom. "Another present for my old woman,"
he said as he did so.
Easy as it was to mow the wet, soft grass, it was hard work going
up and down the steep sides of the ravine. But this did not
trouble the old man. Swinging his scythe just as ever, and
moving his feet in their big, plaited shoes with firm, little
steps, he climbed slowly up the steep place, and though his
breeches hanging out below his smock, and his whole frame
trembled with effort, he did not miss one blade of grass or one
mushroom on his way, and kept making jokes with the peasants and
Levin. Levin walked after him and often thought he must fall, as
he climbed with a scythe up a steep cliff where it would have
been hard work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up
and did what he had to do. He felt as though some external force
were moving him.
Chapter 6
Mashkin Upland was mown, the last row finished, the peasants had
put on their coats and were gaily trudging home. Levin got on
his horse and, parting regretfully from the peasants, rode
homewards. On the hillside he looked back; he could not see them
in the mist that had risen from the valley; he could only hear
rough, good-humored voices, laughter, and the sound of clanking
scythes.
Sergey Ivanovitch had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking
iced lemon and water in his own room, looking through the reviews
and papers which he had only just received by post, when Levin
rushed into the room, talking merrily, with his wet and matted
hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed and
moist.
"We mowed the whole meadow! Oh, it is nice, delicious! And how
have you been getting on?" said Levin, completely forgetting the
disagreeable conversation of the previous day.
"Mercy! what do you look like!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, for the
first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. "And the
door, do shut the door!" he cried. "You must have let in a dozen
at least."
Sergey Ivanovitch could not endure flies, and in his own room he
never opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the
door shut.
"Not one, on my honor. But if I have, I'll catch them. You
wouldn't believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the
day?"
"Very well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I
expect you're as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything
ready for you."
"No, I don't feel hungry even. I had something to eat there.
But I'll go and wash."
"Yes, go along, go along, and I'll come to you directly," said
Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head as he looked at his brother.
"Go along, make haste," he added smiling, and gathering up his
books, he prepared to go too. He, too, felt suddenly
good-humored and disinclined to leave his brother's side. "But
what did you do while it was raining?"
"Rain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I'll come directly. So
you had a nice day too? That's first-rate." And Levin went off
to change his clothes.
Five minutes later the brothers met in the dining room. Although
it seemed to Levin that he was not hungry, and he sat down to
dinner simply so as not to hurt Kouzma's feelings, yet when he
began to eat the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good.
Sergey Ivanovitch watched him with a smile.
"Oh, by the way, there's a letter for you," said he. "Kouzma,
bring it down, please. And mind you shut the doors."
The letter was from Oblonsky. Levin read it aloud. Oblonsky
wrote to him from Petersburg: "I have had a letter from Dolly;
she's at Ergushovo, and everything seems going wrong there. Do
ride over and see her, please; help her with advice; you know all
about it. She will be so glad to see you. She's quite alone,
poor thing. My mother-in-law and all of them are still abroad."
"That's capital! I will certainly ride over to her," said Levin.
"Or we'll go together. She's such a splendid woman, isn't she?"
"They're not far from here, then?"
"Twenty-five miles. Or perhaps it is thirty. But a capital
road. Capital, we'll drive over."
"I shall be delighted," said Sergey Ivanovitch, still smiling.
The sight of his younger brother's appearance had immediately put
him in a good humor.
"Well, you have an appetite!" he said, looking at his dark-red,
sunburnt face and neck bent over the plate.
"Splendid! You can't imagine what an effectual remedy it is for
every sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new
word: _Arbeitskur_."
"Well, but you don't need it, I should fancy."
"No, but for all sorts of nervous invalids."
"Yes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to
look at you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further
than the forest. I sat there a little, and went on by the
forest to the village, met your old nurse, and sounded her as to
the peasants' view of you. As far as I can make out, they don't
approve of this. She said: 'It's not a gentleman's work.'
Altogether, I fancy that in the people's ideas there are very
clear and definite notions of certain, as they call it,
'gentlemanly' lines of action. And they don't sanction the
gentry's moving outside bounds clearly laid down in their ideas."
"Maybe so; but anyway it's a pleasure such as I have never known
in my life. And there's no harm in it, you know. Is there?"
answered Levin. "I can't help it if they don't like it. Though
I do believe it's all right. Eh?"
"Altogether," pursued Sergey Ivanovitch, "you're satisfied with
your day?"
"Quite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid
old man I made friends with there! You can't fancy how
delightful he was!"
"Well, so you're content with your day. And so am I. First, I
solved two chess problems, and one a very pretty one--a pawn
opening. I'll show it you. And then--I thought over our
conversation yesterday."
"Eh! our conversation yesterday?" said Levin, blissfully dropping
his eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner,
and absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation
yesterday was about.
"I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts
to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I
suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in
every man of a certain degree of advancement. Possibly you are
right too, that action founded on material interest would be more
desirable. You are altogether, as the French say, too
_primesautiere_ a nature; you must have intense, energetic action,
or nothing."
Levin listened to his brother and did not understand a single
word, and did not want to understand. He was only afraid his
brother might ask him some question which would make it evident
he had not heard.
"So that's what I think it is, my dear boy," said Sergey
Ivanovitch, touching him on the shoulder.
"Yes, of course. But, do you know? I won't stand up for my
view," answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. "Whatever
was it I was disputing about?" he wondered. "Of course, I'm
right, and he's right, and it's all first-rate. Only I must go
round to the counting house and see to things." He got up,
stretching and smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled too.
"If you want to go out, let's go together," he said, disinclined
to be parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing
out freshness and energy. "Come, we'll go to the counting house,
if you have to go there."
"Oh, heavens!" shouted Levin, so loudly that Sergey Ivanovitch
was quite frightened.
"What, what is the matter?"
"How's Agafea Mihalovna's hand?" said Levin, slapping himself on
the head. "I'd positively forgotten her even."
"It's much better."
"Well, anyway I'll run down to her. Before you've time to get
your hat on, I'll be back."
And he ran downstairs, clattering with his heels like a
spring-rattle.
Chapter 7
Stephan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most
natural and essential official duty--so familiar to everyone in
the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders--
that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government
service, of reminding the ministry of his existence--and having,
for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available
cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the
races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the children
had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as
possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been
her dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold.
It was nearly forty miles from Levin's Pokrovskoe. The big, old
house at Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old
prince had had the lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years
before, when Dolly was a child, the lodge had been roomy and
comfortable, though, like all lodges, it stood sideways to the
entrance avenue, and faced the south. But by now this lodge was
old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down in
the spring to sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to look over
the house and order what repairs might be needed. Stepan
Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very
solicitous for his wife's comfort, and he had himself looked over
the house, and given instructions about everything that he
considered necessary. What he considered necessary was to cover
all the furniture with cretonne, to put up curtains, to weed the
garden, to make a little bridge on the pond, and to plant
flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters, the want of
which greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on.
In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive
father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a
wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in
accordance with them that he shaped his life. On his return to
Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready,
that the house would be a little paradise, and that he advised
her most certainly to go. His wife's staying away in the country
was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of
view: it did the children good, it decreased expenses, and it
left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded staying in
the country for the summer as essential for the children,
especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in
regaining her strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means
of escaping the petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the
wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her
miserable. Besides this, she was pleased to go away to the
country because she was dreaming of getting her sister Kitty to
stay with her there. Kitty was to be back from abroad in the
middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed for her.
Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the
summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations for
both of them.
The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for
Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the
impression she had retained of it was that the country was a
refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town, that life there,
though not luxurious--Dolly could easily make up her mind to
that--was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of
everything, everything was cheap, everything could be got, and
children were happy. But now coming to the country as the head
of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what
she had fancied.
The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain, and
in the night the water came through in the corridor and in the
nursery, so that the beds had to be carried into the drawing
room. There was no kitchen maid to be found; of the nine cows,
it appeared from the words of the cowherd-woman that some were
about to calve, others had just calved, others were old, and
others again hard-uddered; there was not butter nor milk enough
even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no
fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for
roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the
floors--all were potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the
question, because one of the horses was restive, and bolted in
the shafts. There was no place where they could bathe; the whole
of the river-bank was trampled by the cattle and open to the
road; even walks were impossible, for the cattle strayed into the
garden through a gap in the hedge, and there was one terrible
bull, who bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore
somebody. There were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what
cupboards there were either would not close at all, or burst open
whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and pans;
there was no copper in the washhouse, nor even an ironing-board
in the maids' room.
Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of
view, fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in
despair. She exerted herself to the utmost, felt the
hopelessness of the position, and was every instant suppressing
the tears that started into her eyes. The bailiff, a retired
quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had taken a fancy to and
had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome and respectful
appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for Darya
Alexandrovna's woes. He said respectfully, "nothing can be done,
the peasants are such a wretched lot," and did nothing to help
her.
The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys' household,
as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most
valuable and useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her
mistress, assured her that everything would _come round_ (it was
her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without
fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had
immediately made friends with the bailiff's wife, and on the very
first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the
acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of the position.
Very soon Marya Philimonovna had established her club, so to say,
under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of
the bailiff's wife, the village elder, and the counting house
clerk, that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed
away, and in a week's time everything actually had come round.
The roof was mended, a kitchen maid was found--a crony of the
village elder's--hens were bought, the cows began giving milk,
the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a
mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst
open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth
was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of
drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in the maids' room.
"Just see, now, and you were quite in despair," said Marya
Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up
a bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya
Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her expectations,
if not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the
country. Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not
be. One would fall ill, another might easily become so, a third
would be without something necessary, a fourth would show
symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the
brief periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for
Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible. Had it not been
for them, she would have been left alone to brood over her
husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was
for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses
themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in
her children--the children themselves were even now repaying her
in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that
they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she
could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were
good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but
gold.
Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more
frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she
would make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was
mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children. All
the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had
charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set
of children such as is not often to be met with, and she was
happy in them, and proud of them.
Chapter 8
Towards the end of May, when everything had been more or less
satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband's answer to her
complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country.
He wrote begging her forgiveness for not having thought of
everything before, and promised to come down at the first chance.
This chance did not present itself, and till the beginning of
June Darya Alexandrovna stayed alone in the country.
On the Sunday in St. Peter's week Darya Alexandrovna drove to
mass for all her children to take the sacrament. Darya
Alexandrovna in her intimate, philosophical talks with her
sister, her mother, and her friends very often astonished them by
the freedom of her views in regard to religion. She had a
strange religion of transmigration of souls all her own, in which
she had firm faith, troubling herself little about the dogmas of
the Church. But in her family she was strict in carrying out all
that was required by the Church--and not merely in order to set
an example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that the
children had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried
her extremely, and with the full approval and sympathy of Marya
Philimonovna she decided that this should take place now in the
summer.
For several days before, Darya Alexandrovna was busily
deliberating on how to dress all the children. Frocks were made
or altered and washed, seams and flounces were let out, buttons
were sewn on, and ribbons got ready. One dress, Tanya's, which
the English governess had undertaken, cost Darya Alexandrovna
much loss of temper. The English governess in altering it had
made the seams in the wrong place, had taken up the sleeves too
much, and altogether spoilt the dress. It was so narrow on
Tanya's shoulders that it was quite painful to look at her. But
Marya Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets,
and adding a little shoulder-cape. The dress was set right, but
there was nearly a quarrel with the English governess. On the
morning, however, all was happily arranged, and towards ten
o'clock--the time at which they had asked the priest to wait for
them for the mass--the children in their new dresses, with
beaming faces, stood on the step before the carriage waiting
for their mother.
To the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had
harnessed, thanks to the representations of Marya Philimonovna,
the bailiff's horse, Brownie, and Darya Alexandrovna, delayed by
anxiety over her own attire, came out and got in, dressed in a
white muslin gown.
Darya Alexandrovna had done her hair, and dressed with care and
excitement. In the old days she had dressed for her own sake to
look pretty and be admired. Later on, as she got older, dress
became more and more distasteful to her. She saw that she was
losing her good looks. But now she began to feel pleasure and
interest in dress again. Now she did not dress for her own sake,
not for the sake of her own beauty, but simply that as the mother
of those exquisite creatures she might not spoil the general
effect. And looking at herself for the last time in the
looking-glass she was satisfied with herself. She looked nice.
Not nice as she would have wished to look nice in old days at a
ball, but nice for the object which she now had in view.
In the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and
their women-folk. But Darya Alexandrovna saw, or fancied she
saw, the sensation produced by her children and her. The
children were not only beautiful to look at in their smart little
dresses, but they were charming in the way they behaved.
Aliosha, it is true, did not stand quite correctly; he kept
turning round, trying to look at his little jacket from behind;
but all the same he was wonderfully sweet. Tanya behaved like a
grownup person, and looked after the little ones. And the
smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her naive astonishment at
everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking
the sacrament, she said in English, "Please, some more."
On the way home the children felt that something solemn had
happened, and were very sedate.
Everything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began
whistling, and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English
governess, and was forbidden to have any tart. Darya
Alexandrovna would not have let things go so far on such a day
had she been present; but she had to support the English
governess's authority, and she upheld her decision that Grisha
should have no tart. This rather spoiled the general good humor.
Grisha cried, declaring that Nikolinka had whistled too, and he
was not punished, and that he wasn't crying for the tart--he
didn't care--but at being unjustly treated. This was really too
tragic, and Darya Alexandrovna made up her mind to persuade the
English governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak to
her. But on the way, as she passed the drawing room, she beheld
a scene, filling her heart with such pleasure that the tears came
into her eyes, and she forgave the delinquent herself.
The culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the
drawing room; beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the
pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had
asked the governess's permission to take her share of tart to the
nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother. While still
weeping over the injustice of his punishment, he was eating the
tart, and kept saying through his sobs, "Eat yourself; let's eat
it together...together."
Tanya had at first been under the influence of her pity for
Grisha, then of a sense of her noble action, and tears were
standing in her eyes too; but she did not refuse, and ate her
share.
On catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but,
looking into her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They
burst out laughing, and, with their mouths full of tart, they
began wiping their smiling lips with their hands, and smearing
their radiant faces all over with tears and jam.
"Mercy! Your new white frock! Tanya! Grisha!" said their
mother, trying to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes,
smiling a blissful, rapturous smile.
The new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the
little girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old
jackets, and the wagonette to be harnessed; with Brownie, to the
bailiff's annoyance, again in the shafts, to drive out for
mushroom picking and bathing. A roar of delighted shrieks arose
in the nursery, and never ceased till they had set off for the
bathing-place.
They gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a
birch mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole
found them and pointed them out to her; but this time she found a
big one quite of herself, and there was a general scream of
delight, "Lily has found a mushroom!"
Then they reached the river, put the horses under the birch
trees, and went to the bathing-place. The coachman, Terenty,
fastened the horses, who kept whisking away the flies, to a tree,
and, treading down the grass, lay down in the shade of a birch
and smoked his shag, while the never-ceasing shrieks of delight
of the children floated across to him from the bathing-place.
Though it was hard work to look after all the children and
restrain their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep
in one's head and not mix up all the stockings, little breeches,
and shoes for the different legs, and to undo and to do up again
all the tapes and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had always
liked bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the
children, enjoyed nothing so much as bathing with all the
children. To go over all those fat little legs, pulling on their
stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies,
and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the
breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all
her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.
When half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in
holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and
stopped shyly. Marya Philimonovna called one of them and handed
her a sheet and a shirt that had dropped into the water for her
to dry them, and Darya Alexandrovna began to talk to the women.
At first they laughed behind their hands and did not understand
her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to talk,
winning Darya Alexandrovna's heart at once by the genuine
admiration of the children that they showed.
"My, what a beauty! as white as sugar," said one, admiring
Tanitchka, and shaking her head; "but thin..."
"Yes, she has been ill."
"And so they've been bathing you too," said another to the baby.
"No; he's only three months old," answered Darya Alexandrovna
with pride.
"You don't say so!"
"And have you any children?"
"I've had four; I've two living--a boy and a girl. I weaned her
last carnival."
"How old is she?"
"Why, two years old."
"Why did you nurse her so long?"
"It's our custom; for three fasts..."
And the conversation became most interesting to Darya
Alexandrovna. What sort of time did she have? What was the
matter with the boy? Where was her husband? Did it often
happen?
Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant women,
so interesting to her was their conversation, so completely
identical were all their interests. What pleased her most of all
was that she saw clearly what all the women admired more than
anything was her having so many children, and such fine ones.
The peasant women even made Darya Alexandrovna laugh, and
offended the English governess, because she was the cause of the
laughter she did not understand. One of the younger women kept
staring at the Englishwoman, who was dressing after all the rest,
and when she put on her third petticoat she could not refrain
from the remark, "My, she keeps putting on and putting on, and
she'll never have done!" she said, and they all went off into
roars.
Chapter 9
On the drive home, as Darya Alexandrovna, with all her children
round her, their heads still wet from their bath, and a kerchief
tied over her own head, was getting near the house, the coachman
said, "There's some gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe,
I do believe."
Darya Alexandrovna peeped out in front, and was delighted when
she recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure
of Levin walking to meet them. She was glad to see him at any
time, but at this moment she was specially glad he should see her
in all her glory. No one was better able to appreciate her
grandeur than Levin.
Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the
pictures of his daydream of family life.
"You're like a hen with your chickens, Darya Alexandrovna."
"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, holding out her hand
to him.
"Glad to see me, but you didn't let me know. My brother's
staying with me. I got a note from Stiva that you were here."
"From Stiva?" Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise.
"Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might
allow me to be of use to you," said Levin, and as he said it he
became suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on
in silence by the wagonette, snapping off the buds of the
lime trees and nibbling them. He was embarrassed through a sense
that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed by receiving from an
outsider help that should by rights have come from her own
husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not like this little
way of Stepan Arkadyevitch's of foisting his domestic duties on
others. And she was at once aware that Levin was aware of this.
It was just for this fineness of perception, for this delicacy,
that Darya Alexandrovna liked Levin.
"I know, of course," said Levin, "that that simply means that you
would like to see me, and I'm exceedingly glad. Though I can
fancy that, used to town housekeeping as you are, you must feel
in the wilds here, and if there's anything wanted, I'm altogether
at your disposal."
"Oh, no!" said Dolly. "At first things were rather
uncomfortable, but now we've settled everything capitally--
thanks to my old nurse," she said, indicating Marya Philimonovna,
who, seeing that they were speaking of her, smiled brightly and
cordially to Levin. She knew him, and knew that he would be a
good match for her young lady, and was very keen to see the
matter settled.
"Won't you get in, sir, we'll make room this side!" she said to
him.
"No, I'll walk. Children, who'd like to race the horses with
me?" The children knew Levin very little, and could not remember
when they had seen him, but they experienced in regard to him
none of that strange feeling of shyness and hostility which
children so often experience towards hypocritical, grown-up
people, and for which they are so often and miserably punished.
Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most
penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes
it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be
disguised. Whatever faults Levin had, there was not a trace of
hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same
friendliness that they saw in their mother's face. On his
invitation, the two elder ones at once jumped out to him and ran
with him as simply as they would have done with their nurse or
Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily, too, began begging to go to
him, and her mother handed her to him; he sat her on his shoulder
and ran along with her.
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Darya Alexandrovna!" he said,
smiling good-humoredly to the mother; "there's no chance of my
hurting or dropping her."
And, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and
needlessly wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and
smiled gaily and approvingly as she watched him.
Here, in the country, with children, and with Darya Alexandrovna,
with whom he was in sympathy, Levin was in a mood not infrequent
with him, of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly
liked in him. As he ran with the children, he taught them
gymnastic feats, set Miss Hoole laughing with his queer English
accent, and talked to Darya Alexandrovna of his pursuits in the
country.
After dinner, Darya Alexandrovna, sitting alone with him on the
balcony, began to speak of Kitty.
"You know, Kitty's coming here, and is going to spend the summer
with me."
"Really," he said, flushing, and at once, to change the
conversation, he said: "Then I'll send you two cows, shall I? If
you insist on a bill you shall pay me five roubles a month; but
it's really too bad of you."
"No, thank you. We can manage very well now."
"Oh, well, then, I'll have a look at your cows, and if you'll
allow me, I'll give directions about their food. Everything
depends on their food."
And Levin, to turn the conversation, explained to Darya
Alexandrovna the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle
that the cow is simply a machine for the transformation of food
into milk, and so on.
He talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Kitty,
and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the
breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.
"Yes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there
to look after it?" Darya Alexandrovna responded, without
interest.
She had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily
arranged, thanks to Marya Philimonovna, that she was disinclined
to make any change in them; besides, she had no faith in Levin's
knowledge of farming. General principles, as to the cow being a
machine for the production of milk, she looked on with suspicion.
It seemed to her that such principles could only be a hindrance
in farm management. It all seemed to her a far simpler matter:
all that was needed, as Marya Philimonovna had explained, was to
give Brindle and Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let
the cook carry all the kitchen slops to the laundry maid's cow.
That was clear. But general propositions as to feeding on meal
and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was most
important, she wanted to talk about Kitty.
Chapter 10
"Kitty writes to me that there's nothing she longs for so much as
quiet and solitude," Dolly said after the silence that had
followed.
"And how is she--better?" Levin asked in agitation.
"Thank God, she's quite well again. I never believed her lungs
were affected."
"Oh, I'm very glad!" said Levin, and Dolly fancied she saw
something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and
looked silently into her face.
"Let me ask you, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," said Darya
Alexandrovna, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, "why
is it you are angry with Kitty?"
"I? I'm not angry with her," said Levin.
"Yes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor
them when you were in Moscow?"
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, blushing up to the roots of his
hair, "I wonder really that with your kind heart you don't feel
this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when
you know..."
"What do I know?"
"You know I made an offer and that I was refused," said Levin,
and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Kitty a minute
before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had
suffered.
"What makes you suppose I know?"
"Because everybody knows it..."
"That's just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though
I had guessed it was so."
"Well, now you know it."
"All I knew was that something had happened that made her
dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of
it. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak
of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me."
"I have told you."
"When was it?"
"When I was at their house the last time."
"Do you know that," said Darya Alexandrovna, "I am awfully,
awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride...."
"Perhaps so," said Levin, "but..."
She interrupted him.
"But she, poor girl...I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I
see it all."
"Well, Darya Alexandrovna, you must excuse me," he said, getting
up. "Good-bye, Darya Alexandrovna, till we meet again."
"No, wait a minute," she said, clutching him by the sleeve.
"Wait a minute, sit down."
"Please, please, don't let us talk of this," he said, sitting
down, and at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his
heart a hope he had believed to be buried.
"If I did not like you," she said, and tears came into her eyes;
"if I did not know you, as I do know you . . ."
The feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up
and took possession of Levin's heart.
"Yes, I understand it all now," said Darya Alexandrovna. "You
can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own
choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a
position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a
girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,--
a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot
tell what to say."
"Yes, if the heart does not speak..."
"No, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views
about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you
criticize, you wait to see if you have found what you love, and
then, when you are sure you love her, you make an offer...."
"Well, that's not quite it."
"Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the
balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing
from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her
choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer 'yes' or
'no.'"
"Yes, to choose between me and Vronsky," thought Levin, and the
dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only
weighed on his heart and set it aching.
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, "that's how one chooses a new
dress or some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been
made, and so much the better.... And there can be no repeating
it."
"Ah, pride, pride!" said Darya Alexandrovna, as though despising
him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that
other feeling which only women know. "At the time when you made
Kitty an offer she was just in a position in which she could not
answer. She was in doubt. Doubt between you and Vronsky. Him
she was seeing every day, and you she had not seen for a long
while. Supposing she had been older...I, for instance, in her
place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him, and so it
has turned out."
Levin recalled Kitty's answer. She had said: "_No, that cannot
be_..."
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said dryly, "I appreciate your
confidence in me; I believe you are making a mistake. But
whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any
thought of Katerina Alexandrovna out of the question for me,--
you understand, utterly out of the question."
"I will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of
my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don't say
she cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that
moment proves nothing."
"I don't know!" said Levin, jumping up. "If you only knew how
you are hurting me. It's just as if a child of yours were dead,
and they were to say to you: He would have been like this and
like that, and he might have lived, and how happy you would have
been in him. But he's dead, dead, dead!..."
"How absurd you are!" said Darya Alexandrovna, looking with
mournful tenderness at Levin's excitement. "Yes, I see it all
more and more clearly," she went on musingly. "So you won't come
to see us, then, when Kitty's here?"
"No, I shan't come. Of course I won't avoid meeting Katerina
Alexandrovna, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the
annoyance of my presence."
"You are very, very absurd," repeated Darya Alexandrovna, looking
with tenderness into his face. "Very well then, let it be as
though we had not spoken of this. What have you come for,
Tanya?" she said in French to the little girl who had come in.
"Where's my spade, mamma?"
"I speak French, and you must too."
The little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember
the French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her
in French where to look for the spade. And this made a
disagreeable impression on Levin.
Everything in Darya Alexandrovna's house and children struck him
now as by no means so charming as a little while before. "And
what does she talk French with the children for?" he thought;
"how unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it so:
Learning French and unlearning sincerity," he thought to himself,
unaware that Darya Alexandrovna had thought all that over twenty
times already, and yet, even at the cost of some loss of
sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children French in
that way.
"But why are you going? Do stay a little."
Levin stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished, and he felt
ill at ease.
After tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put
in, and, when he came back, he found Darya Alexandrovna greatly
disturbed, with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While
Levin had been outside, an incident had occurred which had
utterly shattered all the happiness she had been feeling that
day, and her pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had been
fighting over a ball. Darya Alexandrovna, hearing a scream in
the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya was pulling
Grisha's hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was
beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her.
Something snapped in Darya Alexandrovna's heart when she saw
this. It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she
felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of, were
not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill-bred children,
with coarse, brutal propensities--wicked children.
She could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not
speak to Levin of her misery.
Levin saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that
it showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he
said it, he was thinking in his heart: "No, I won't be
artificial and talk French with my children; but my children
won't be like that. All one has to do is not spoil children, not
to distort their nature, and they'll be delightful. No, my
children won't be like that."
He said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.
Chapter 11
In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin's
sister's estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to
Levin to report on how things were going there and on the hay.
The chief source of income on his sister's estate was from the
riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been bought by
the peasants for twenty roubles the three acres. When Levin took
over the management of the estate, he thought on examining the
grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed the price at
twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not give
that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers.
Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the
grass cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a
certain proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every
hindrance they could in the way of this new arrangement, but it
was carried out, and the first year the meadows had yielded a
profit almost double. The previous year--which was the third
year--the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the
arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same system. This
year the peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of the
hay crop, and the village elder had come now to announce that the
hay had been cut, and that, fearing rain, they had invited the
counting-house clerk over, had divided the crop in his presence,
and had raked together eleven stacks as the owner's share. From
the vague answers to his question how much hay had been cut on
the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village elder who had
made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone of the
peasant, Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the
division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself
to look into the matter.
Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the
cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother's
wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man in his bee-house,
wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay.
Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old man, gave Levin a very warm
welcome, showed him all he was doing, told him everything about
his bees and the swarms of that year; but gave vague and
unwilling answers to Levin's inquiries about the mowing. This
confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to the
hay fields and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not
possibly contain fifty wagon-loads each, and to convict the
peasants Levin ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be
brought up directly, to lift one stack, and carry it into the
barn. There turned out to be only thirty-two loads in the stack.
In spite of the village elder's assertions about the
compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the
stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in the
fear of God, Levin stuck to his point that the hay had been
divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not
accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged
dispute the matter was decided by the peasants taking these
eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments
and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon.
When the last of the hay had been divided, Levin, intrusting the
superintendence of the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down
on a haycock marked off by a stake of willow, and looked
admiringly at the meadow swarming with peasants.
In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved
a bright-colored line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was
being rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green
stubble. After the women came the men with pitchforks, and from
the gray rows there were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks.
To the left, carts were rumbling over the meadow that had been
already cleared, and one after another the haycocks vanished,
flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their place there were rising
heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the horses'
hind-quarters.
"What weather for haying! What hay it'll be!" said an old man,
squatting down beside Levin. "It's tea, not hay! It's like
scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!" he
added, pointing to the growing haycocks. "Since dinnertime
they've carried a good half of it."
"The last load, eh?" he shouted to a young peasant, who drove by,
standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the cord reins.
"The last, dad!" the lad shouted back, pulling in the horse, and,
smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-checked peasant girl
who sat in the cart smiling too, and drove on.
"Who's that? Your son?" asked Levin.
"My baby," said the old man with a tender smile.
"What a fine fellow!"
"The lad's all right."
"Married already?"
"Yes, it's two years last St. Philip's day."
"Any children?"
"Children indeed! Why, for over a year he was innocent as a babe
himself, and bashful too," answered the old man. "Well, the hay!
It's as fragrant as tea!" he repeated, wishing to change the
subject.
Levin looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife.
They were loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan
Parmenov was standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and
stamping down the huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young
wife deftly handed up to him, at first in armfuls, and then on
the pitchfork. The young wife worked easily, merrily, and
dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off
her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into
it, then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight of
her body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red
belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the
white smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and
flung the bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously
doing his best to save her every minute of unnecessary labor,
made haste, opening his arms to clutch the bundle and lay it in
the cart. As she raked together what was left of the hay, the
young wife shook off the bits of hay that had fallen on her neck,
and straightening the red kerchief that had dropped forward over
her white brow, not browned like her face by the sun, she crept
under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how to
fasten the cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he
laughed aloud. In the expressions of both faces was to be seen
vigorous, young, freshly awakened love.
Chapter 12
The load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek
horse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the
load, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join
the women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers' dance.
Ivan drove off to the road and fell into line with the other
loaded carts. The peasant women, with their rakes on their
shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing,
merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild untrained
female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a
verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half
a hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine,
singing in unison.
The women, all singing, began to come close to Levin, and he felt
as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of
merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock
on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the
wagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed
to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry song
with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Levin felt envious of
this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in the
expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had
to lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with their
singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling
of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his
alienation from this world, came over Levin.
Some of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling
with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely,
and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted
him goodhumoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of
having any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any
recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was
drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God gave the day, God
gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated
to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the labor?
What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations--
beside the point.
Often Levin had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy
of the men who led this life; but today for the first time,
especially under the influence of what he had seen in the
attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented
itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to
exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life
he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful
life.
The old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone
home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had
gone home, while those who came from far were gathered into a
group for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Levin,
unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still
looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for
the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summer
night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughing
all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.
All the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness
of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to
be heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in
the marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the
meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Levin got up from
the haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was
over.
"Well, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?" he
said to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts
and feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the
thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three
separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old
life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave
him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of
thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live
now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt
clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content,
the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so
miserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the
question how to effect this transition from the old life to the
new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. "Have a wife?
Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy
land? Become a member of a peasant community? Marry a peasant
girl? How am I to set about it?" he asked himself again, and
could not find an answer. "I haven't slept all night, though,
and I can't think it out clearly," he said to himself. "I'll
work it out later. One thing's certain, this night has decided
my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not the
real thing," he told himself. "It's all ever so much simpler and
better..."
"How beautiful!" he thought, looking at the strange, as it were,
mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudlets resting right
over his head in the middle of the sky. "How exquisite it all is
in this exquisite night! And when was there time for that
cloud-shell to form? Just now I looked at the sky, and there was
nothing in it--only two white streaks. Yes, and so
imperceptibly too my views of life changed!"
He went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards
the village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and
sullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the
dawn, the full triumph of light over darkness.
Shrinking from the cold, Levin walked rapidly, looking at the
ground. "What's that? Someone coming," he thought, catching the
tinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a
carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards
him along the grassy road on which he was walking. The
shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but the
dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts,
so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.
This was all Levin noticed, and without wondering who it could
be, he gazed absently at the coach.
In the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the
window, evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in
both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light
and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life, that was
remote from Levin, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of the
sunrise.
At the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the
truthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face
lighted up with wondering delight.
He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in
the world. There was only one creature in the world that could
concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It
was she. It was Kitty. He understood that she was driving to
Ergushovo from the railway station. And everything that had been
stirring Levin during that sleepless night, all the resolutions
he had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his
dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriage
that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was
rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution of
the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him
of late.
She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs
was no longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The
barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and
all that was left was the empty fields all round, the village in
front, and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wandering
lonely along the deserted highroad.
He glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell he
had been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and
feelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in the
least like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, a
mysterious change had been accomplished. There was no trace of
shell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an even
cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown blue
and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same
remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.
"No," he said to himself, "however good that life of simplicity
and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love _her_."
Chapter 13
None but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch
knew that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable
of men, he had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of
his character. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a
child or woman crying without being moved. The sight of tears
threw him into a state of nervous agitation, and he utterly lost
all power of reflection. The chief secretary of his department
and his private secretary were aware of this, and used to warn
women who came with petitions on no account to give way to tears,
if they did not want to ruin their chances. "He will get angry,
and will not listen to you," they used to say. And as a fact, in
such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey
Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty
anger. "I can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!" he would
commonly cry in such cases.
When returning from the races Anna had informed him of her
relations with Vronsky, and immediately afterwards had burst into
tears, hiding her face in her hands, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for
all the fury aroused in him against her, was aware at the same
time of a rush of that emotional disturbance always produced in
him by tears. Conscious of it, and conscious that any expression
of his feelings at that minute would be out of keeping with the
position, he tried to suppress every manifestation of life in
himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at her. This was what
had caused that strange expression of deathlike rigidity in his
face which had so impressed Anna.
When they reached the house he helped her to get out of the
carriage, and making an effort to master himself, took leave of
her with his usual urbanity, and uttered that phrase that bound
him to nothing; he said that tomorrow he would let her know his
decision.
His wife's words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a
cruel pang to the heart of Alexey Alexandrovitch. That pang was
intensified by the strange feeling of physical pity for her set
up by her tears. But when he was all alone in the carriage
Alexey Alexandrovitch, to his surprise and delight, felt complete
relief both from this pity and from the doubts and agonies of
jealousy.
He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out
after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a
sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn
out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own
good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his
existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that
he can live and think again, and take interest in other things
besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey Alexandrovitch was
experiencing. The agony had been strange and terrible, but now
it was over; he felt that he could live again and think of
something other than his wife.
"No honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always
knew it and always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to
spare her," he said to himself. And it actually seemed to him
that he always had seen it: he recalled incidents of their past
life, in which he had never seen anything wrong before--now
these incidents proved clearly that she had always been a corrupt
woman. "I made a mistake in linking my life to hers; but there
was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy.
It's not I that am to blame," he told himself, "but she. But I
have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me..."
Everything relating to her and her son, towards whom his
sentiments were as much changed as towards her, ceased to
interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the
question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and
comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate
himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her
fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and
useful existence.
"I cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman
has committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of
the difficult position in which she has placed me. And I shall
find it," he said to himself, frowning more and more. "I'm not
the first nor the last." And to say nothing of historical
instances dating from the "Fair Helen" of Menelaus, recently
revived in the memory of all, a whole list of contemporary
examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the highest society
rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch's imagination. "Daryalov,
Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram.... Yes, even
Dram, such an honest, capable fellow...Semyonov, Tchagin,
Sigonin," Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. "Admitting that a
certain quite irrational _ridicule_ falls to the lot of these men,
yet I never saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt
sympathy for it," Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though
indeed this was not the fact, and he had never felt sympathy for
misfortunes of that kind, but the more frequently he had heard of
instances of unfaithful wives betraying their husbands, the more
highly he had thought of himself. "It is a misfortune which may
befall anyone. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only
thing to be done is to make the best of the position."
And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men
who had been in the same position that he was in.
"Daryalov fought a duel...."
The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey
Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a
coward, and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey
Alexandrovitch could not without horror contemplate the idea of a
pistol aimed at himself, and had never made use of any weapon in his
life. This horror had in his youth set him pondering on dueling,
and picturing himself in a position in which he would have to
expose his life to danger. Having attained success and an
established position in the world, he had long ago forgotten this
feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted itself, and
dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that Alexey
Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of
dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel,
though he was fully aware beforehand that he would never under
any circumstances fight one.
"There's no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it's not the
same in England) that very many"--and among these were those
whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued--"look
favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose
I call him out," Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and
vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge,
and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never
would do it--"suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught," he
went on musing, "to shoot; I press the trigger," he said to
himself, closing his eyes, "and it turns out I have killed him,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as
though to dispel such silly ideas. "What sense is there in
murdering a man in order to define one's relation to a guilty
wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I
ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would
doubtless occur--I should be killed or wounded. I, the
innocent person, should be the victim--killed or wounded. It's
even more senseless. But apart from that, a challenge to fight
would be an act hardly honest on my side. Don't I know perfectly
well that my friends would never allow me to fight a duel--would
never allow the life of a statesman, needed by Russia, to be
exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that the
matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my
simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a
challenge. That would be dishonest, that would be false, that
would be deceiving myself and others. A duel is quite
irrational, and no one expects it of me. My aim is simply to
safeguard my reputation, which is essential for the uninterrupted
pursuit of my public duties." Official duties, which had always
been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes, seemed
of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering
and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to
divorce--another solution selected by several of the husbands he
remembered. Passing in mental review all the instances he knew
of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest
society with which he was very familiar), Alexey Alexandrovitch
could not find a single example in which the object of divorce
was that which he had in view. In all these instances the
husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and
the very party which, being in fault, had not the right to
contract a fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit,
pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self-styled husband. In his own
case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is to
say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was
impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of
the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife's guilt,
required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain
refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being
brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward
such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than
it would her.
An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal,
which would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and
attacks on his high position in society. His chief object, to
define the position with the least amount of disturbance
possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in
the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce,
it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the
husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in spite of the
complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt
for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch
still had one feeling left in regard to her--a disinclination to
see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime
would be to her advantage. The mere notion of this so
exasperated Alexey Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his
mind he groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his
place in the carriage, and for a long while after, he sat with
scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy
rug.
"Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov,
Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram--that is, separate from
one's wife," he went on thinking, when he had regained his
composure. But this step too presented the same drawback of
public scandal as a divorce, and what was more, a separation,
quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms
of Vronsky. "No, it's out of the question, out of the question!"
he said again, twisting his rug about him again. "I cannot be
unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy."
The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period
of uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had
been with agony extracted by his wife's words. But that feeling
had been replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she
should not be triumphant, but that she should get due punishment
for her crime. He did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the
bottom of his heart he longed for her to suffer for having
destroyed his peace of mind--his honor. And going once again
over the conditions inseparable from a duel, a divorce, a
separation, and once again rejecting them, Alexey Alexandrovitch
felt convinced that there was only one solution,--to keep her
with him, concealing what had happened from the world, and using
every measure in his power to break off the intrigue, and still
more--though this he did not admit to himself--to punish her.
"I must inform her of my conclusion, that thinking over the
terrible position in which she has placed her family, all other
solutions will be worse for both sides than an external _status
quo_, and that such I agree to retain, on the strict condition of
obedience on her part to my wishes, that is to say, cessation of
all intercourse with her lover." When this decision had been
finally adopted, another weighty consideration occurred to Alexey
Alexandrovitch in support of it. "By such a course only shall I
be acting in accordance with the dictates of religion," he told
himself. "In adopting this course, I am not casting off a
guilty wife, but giving her a chance of amendment; and, indeed,
difficult as the task will be to me, I shall devote part of my
energies to her reformation and salvation."
Though Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could
not exert any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt
at reformation could lead to nothing but falsity; though in
passing through these difficult moments he had not once thought
of seeking guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion
corresponded, as it seemed to him, with the requirements of
religion, this religious sanction to his decision gave him
complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his peace of
mind. He was pleased to think that, even in such an important
crisis in life, no one would be able to say that he had not acted
in accordance with the principles of that religion whose banner
he had always held aloft amid the general coolness and
indifference. As he pondered over subsequent developments,
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with
his wife should not remain practically the same as before. No
doubt, she could never regain his esteem, but there was not, and
there could not be, any sort of reason that his existence should
be troubled, and that he should suffer because she was a bad and
faithless wife. "Yes, time will pass; time, which arranges all
things, and the old relations will be reestablished," Alexey
Alexandrovitch told himself; "so far reestablished, that is, that
I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life.
She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I
cannot be unhappy."
Chapter 14
As he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered
entirely to his decision, but was even composing in his head the
letter he would write to his wife. Going into the porter's room,
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at the letters and papers brought
from his office, and directed that they should be brought to him
in his study.
"The horses can be taken out and I will see no one," he said in
answer to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his
agreeable frame of mind, emphasizing the words, "see no one."
In his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and
stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had
already been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He
cracked his knuckles and sat down, sorting out his writing
appurtenances. Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his head
on one side, thought a minute, and began to write, without
pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form of address
to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural "_vous_,"
which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding
Russian form.
"At our last conversation, I notified you of my intention to
communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that
conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am
writing now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My
decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I
do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we
are bound by a Higher Power. The family cannot be broken up by a
whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the
marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past.
This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully
persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called
forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in
eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the
past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you
and your son. All this I hope to discuss more in detail in a
personal interview. As the season is drawing to a close, I
would beg you to return to Petersburg as quickly as possible, not
later than Tuesday. All necessary preparations shall be made for
your arrival here. I beg you to note that I attach particular
significance to compliance with this request.
A. Karenin
"P.S.--I enclose the money which may be needed for your
expenses."
He read the letter through and felt pleased with it, and
especially that he had remembered to enclose money: there was
not a harsh word, not a reproach in it, nor was there undue
indulgence. Most of all, it was a golden bridge for return.
Folding the letter and smoothing it with a massive ivory knife,
and putting it in an envelope with the money, he rang the bell
with the gratification it always afforded him to use the
well arranged appointments of his writing-table.
"Give this to the courier to be delivered to Anna Arkadyevna
tomorrow at the summer villa," he said, getting up.
"Certainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?"
Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and
playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy chair,
near which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the
French work on Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over
the easy chair there hung in a gold frame an oval portrait of
Anna, a fine painting by a celebrated artist. Alexey
Alexandrovitch glanced at it. The unfathomable eyes gazed
ironically and insolently at him. Insufferably insolent and
challenging was the effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch's eyes of the
black lace about the head, admirably touched in by the painter,
the black hair and handsome white hand with one finger lifted,
covered with rings. After looking at the portrait for a minute,
Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered so that his lips quivered and he
uttered the sound "brrr," and turned away. He made haste to sit
down in his easy chair and opened the book. He tried to read,
but he could not revive the very vivid interest he had felt
before in Egyptian hieroglyphics. He looked at the book and
thought of something else. He thought not of his wife, but of a
complication that had arisen in his official life, which at the
time constituted the chief interest of it. He felt that he had
penetrated more deeply than ever before into this intricate
affair, and that he had originated a leading idea--he could say
it without self-flattery--calculated to clear up the whole
business, to strengthen him in his official career, to discomfit
his enemies, and thereby to be of the greatest benefit to the
government. Directly the servant had set the tea and left the
room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the writing-table.
Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of papers, with a
scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil
from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report
relating to the present complication. The complication was of
this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a
politician, that special individual qualification that every
rising functionary possesses, the qualification that with his
unflagging ambition, his reserve, his honesty, and with his
self-confidence had made his career, was his contempt for red
tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his direct contact,
wherever possible, with the living fact, and his economy. It
happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had set on
foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky
province, which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch's department,
and was a glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper
reforms. Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this.
The irrigation of these lands in the Zaraisky province had been
initiated by the predecessor of Alexey Alexandrovitch's
predecessor. And vast sums of money had actually been spent and
were still being spent on this business, and utterly
unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to
nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at
once on entering office, and would have liked to lay hands on the
Board of Irrigation. But at first, when he did not yet feel
secure in his position, he knew it would affect too many
interests, and would be injudicious. Later on he had been
engrossed in other questions, and had simply forgotten the Board
of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all such boards, by the
mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their livelihood by
the Board of Irrigation, especially one highly conscientious and
musical family: all the daughters played on stringed instruments,
and Alexey Alexandrovitch knew the family and had stood godfather
to one of the elder daughters.) The raising of this question by a
hostile department was in Alexey Alexandrovitch's opinion a
dishonorable proceeding, seeing that in every department there
were things similar and worse, which no one inquired into, for
well-known reasons of official etiquette. However, now that the
glove had been thrown down to him, he had boldly picked it up and
demanded the appointment of a special commission to investigate
and verify the working of the Board of Irrigation of the lands in
the Zaraisky province. But in compensation he gave no quarter to
the enemy either. He demanded the appointment of another special
commission to inquire into the question of the Native Tribes
Organization Committee. The question of the Native Tribes had
been brought up incidentally in the Commission of the 2nd of
June, and had been pressed forward actively by Alexey
Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on account of the
deplorable condition of the native tribes. In the commission
this question had been a ground of contention between several
departments. The department hostile to Alexey Alexandrovitch
proved that the condition of the native tribes was exceedingly
flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be the ruin
of their prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it
arose mainly from the failure on the part of Alexey
Alexandrovitch's department to carry out the measures prescribed
by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First,
that a new commission should be formed which should be empowered
to investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot;
secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native
tribes actually was such as it appeared to be from the official
documents in the hands of the committee, that another new
scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the
deplorable condition of the native tribes from the--(1)
political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical,
(5) material, and (6) religious points of view; thirdly, that
evidence should be required from the rival department of the
measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that
department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the
native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that
that department explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence
before the committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December
5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the
intent of the law T...Act 18, and the note to Act 36. A flash
of eagerness suffused the face of Alexey Alexandrovitch as he
rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for his own benefit.
Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note
to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain
necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room,
he glanced again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled
contemptuously. After reading a little more of the book on
Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey
Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o'clock, and recollecting as
he lay in bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no
means such a gloomy light.
Chapter 15
Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted
Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the
bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and
dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it.
On the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth
in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had
suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had
left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything
was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and
deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was
now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but
it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood
about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in
uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being
made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she
did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband,
though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell
him.
When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her
mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed
to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could
have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and
could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were
spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying
anything. "I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very
instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told
him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had
not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him
and did not tell him?" And in answer to this question a burning
blush of shame spread over her face. She knew what had kept her
from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which
had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck
her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She
felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought
before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the
most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being
turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the
world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned
out of the house, and she could not find an answer.
When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not
love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that
she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against
him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken
to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination,
she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them. She could
not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face.
She could not bring herself to call her maid, and still less go
downstairs and see her son and his governess.
The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while,
came into her room of her own accord. Anna glanced inquiringly
into her face, and blushed with a scared look. The maid begged
her pardon for coming in, saying that she had fancied the bell
rang. She brought her clothes and a note. The note was from
Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova and Baroness
Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with her that morning with
their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov. "Come, if only as a
study in morals. I shall expect you," she finished.
Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.
"Nothing, I need nothing," she said to Annushka, who was
rearranging the bottles and brushes on the dressing table. "You
can go. I'll dress at once and come down. I need nothing."
Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in
the same position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and
every now and then she shivered all over, seemed as though she
would make some gesture, utter some word, and sank back into
lifelessness again. She repeated continually, "My God! my God!"
But neither "God" nor "my" had any meaning to her. The idea of
seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her
as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she
had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought
up. She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon
condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of
life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at
the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which
she found herself. She felt as though everything were beginning
to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double
to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she
feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired
what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what
she longed for, she could not have said.
"Ah, what am I doing!" she said to herself, feeling a sudden
thrill of pain in both sides of her head. When she came to
herself, she saw that she was holding her hair in both hands,
each side of her temples, and pulling it. She jumped up, and
began walking about.
"The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,"
said Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same
position.
"Seryozha? What about Seryozha?" Anna asked, with sudden
eagerness, recollecting her son's existence for the first time
that morning.
"He's been naughty, I think," answered Annushka with a smile.
"In what way?"
"Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I
think he slipped in and ate one of them on the sly."
The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the
helpless condition in which she found herself. She recalled the
partly sincere, though greatly exaggerated, role of the mother
living for her child, which she had taken up of late years, and
she felt with joy that in the plight in which she found herself
she had a support, quite apart from her relation to her husband
or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In whatever position
she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband
might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold
to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him
again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son.
She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this
relation to her son, so that he might not be taken from her.
Quickly indeed, as quickly as possible, she must take action
before he was taken from her. She must take her son and go away.
Here was the one thing she had to do now. She needed
consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this insufferable
position. The thought of immediate action binding her to her
son, of going away somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.
She dressed quickly, went downstairs, and with resolute steps
walked into the drawing room, where she found, as usual, waiting
for her, the coffee, Seryozha, and his governess. Seryozha, all
in white, with his back and head bent, was standing at a table
under a looking-glass, and with an expression of intense
concentration which she knew well, and in which he resembled his
father, he was doing something to the flowers he carried.
The governess had a particularly severe expression. Seryozha
screamed shrilly, as he often did, "Ah, mamma!" and stopped,
hesitating whether to go to greet his mother and put down the
flowers, or to finish making the wreath and go with the flowers.
The governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and
detailed account of Seryozha's naughtiness, but Anna did not hear
her; she was considering whether she would take her with her or
not. "No, I won't take her," she decided. "I'll go alone with
my child."
"Yes, it's very wrong," said Anna, and taking her son by the
shoulder she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance
that bewildered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him.
"Leave him to me," she said to the astonished governess, and not
letting go of her son, she sat down at the table, where coffee
was set ready for her.
"Mamma! I...I...didn't..." he said, trying to make out from her
expression what was in store for him in regard to the peaches.
"Seryozha," she said, as soon as the governess had left the room,
"that was wrong, but you'll never do it again, will you?... You
love me?"
She felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. "Can I help
loving him?" she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared
and at the same time delighted eyes. "And can he ever join his
father in punishing me? Is it possible he will not feel for me?"
Tears were already flowing down her face, and to hide them she
got up abruptly and almost ran out on to the terrace.
After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright
weather had set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that
filtered through the freshly washed leaves.
She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which
had clutched her with fresh force in the open air.
"Run along, run along to Mariette," she said to Seryozha, who had
followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw
matting of the terrace. "Can it be that they won't forgive me,
won't understand how it all couldn't be helped?" she said to
herself.
Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving
in the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves
in the cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her,
that everyone and everything would be merciless to her now as
was that sky, that green. And again she felt that everything was
split in two in her soul. "I mustn't, mustn't think," she said
to herself. "I must get ready. To go where? When? Whom to
take with me? Yes, to Moscow by the evening train. Annushka and
Seryozha, and only the most necessary things. But first I must
write to them both." She went quickly indoors into her boudoir,
sat down at the table, and wrote to her husband:--"After what
has happened, I cannot remain any longer in your house. I am
going away, and taking my son with me. I don't know the law, and
so I don't know with which of the parents the son should remain;
but I take him with me because I cannot live without him. Be
generous, leave him to me."
Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal
to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and
the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching,
pulled her up. "Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak,
because..."
She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. "No," she
said to herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up
the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to
generosity, and sealed it up.
Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. "I have told my
husband," she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write
more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. "And what more am I to
write to him?" she said to herself. Again a flush of shame spread
over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger
against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she
had written into tiny bits. "No need of anything," she said to
herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told
the governess and the servants that she was going that day to
Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.
Chapter 16
All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters,
gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things.
Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop
for cord; pieces of newspaper were tossing about on the floor.
Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs, had been carried down
into the hall. The carriage and two hired cabs were waiting at
the steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation in the work of
packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her
traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle
of some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window and
saw Alexey Alexandrovitch's courier on the steps, ringing at the
front door bell.
"Run and find out what it is," she said, and with a calm sense of
being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding
her hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet
directed in Alexey Alexandrovitch's hand.
"The courier has orders to wait for an answer," he said.
"Very well," she said, and as soon as he had left the room she
tore open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded
notes done up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the
letter and began reading it at the end. "Preparations shall be
made for your arrival here...I attach particular significance to
compliance..." she read. She ran on, then back, read it all
through, and once more read the letter all through again from the
beginning. When she had finished, she felt that she was cold all
over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected,
had burst upon her.
In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her
husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could
be unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and
gave her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her
more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.
"He's right!" she said; "of course, he's always right; he's a
Christian, he's generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one
understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can't
explain it. They say he's so religious, so high-principled, so
upright, so clever; but they don't see what I've seen. They
don't know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed
everything that was living in me--he has not once even thought
that I'm a live woman who must have love. They don't know how at
every step he's humiliated me, and been just as pleased with
himself. Haven't I striven, striven with all my strength, to
find something to give meaning to my life? Haven't I struggled
to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband?
But the time came when I knew that I couldn't cheat myself any
longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has
made me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do?
If he'd killed me, if he'd killed him, I could have borne
anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he.... How
was it I didn't guess what he would do? He's doing just what's
characteristic of his mean character. He'll keep himself in the
right, while me, in my ruin, he'll drive still lower to worse
ruin yet..."
She recalled the words from the letter. "You can conjecture what
awaits you and your son...." "That's a threat to take away my
child, and most likely by their stupid law he can. But I know
very well why he says it. He doesn't believe even in my love for
my child, or he despises it (just as he always used to ridicule
it). He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won't
abandon my child, that I can't abandon my child, that there
could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I
love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I
should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He
knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that."
She recalled another sentence in the letter. "Our life must go
on as it has done in the past...." "That life was miserable
enough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it
be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can't repent that
I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but
lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know
him; I know that he's at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish
swimming in the water. No, I won't give him that happiness.
I'll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to
catch me, come what may. Anything's better than lying and
deceit.
"But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I
am?..."
"No; I will break through it, I will break through it!" she
cried, jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to
the writing table to write him another letter. But at the bottom
of her heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break
through anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of
her old position, however false and dishonorable it might be.
She sat down at the writing table, but instead of writing she
clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them,
burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a child
crying. She was weeping that her dream of her position being
made clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knew
beforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and far
worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the position
in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so
little consequence in the morning, that this position was
precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange
it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband
and child to join her lover; that however much she might
struggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She would
never know freedom in love, but would remain forever a guilty
wife, with the menace of detection hanging over her at every
instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful
connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life
she could never share. She knew that this was how it would be,
and at the same time it was so awful that she could not even
conceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint,
as children cry when they are punished.
The sound of the footman's steps forced her to rouse herself,
and, hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.
"The courier asks if there's an answer," the footman announced.
"An answer? Yes," said Anna. "Let him wait. I'll ring."
"What can I write?" she thought. "What can I decide upon
alone? What do I know? What do I want? What is there I care
for?" Again she felt that her soul was beginning to be split in
two. She was terrified again at this feeling, and clutched at
the first pretext for doing something which might divert her
thoughts from herself. "I ought to see Alexey" (so she called
Vronsky in her thoughts); "no one but he can tell me what I ought
to do. I'll go to Betsy's, perhaps I shall see him there," she
said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him
the day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya's, he
had said that in that case he should not go either. She went up
to the table, wrote to her husband, "I have received your letter.
--A."; and, ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.
"We are not going," she said to Annushka, as she came in.
"Not going at all?"
"No; don't unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I'm
going to the princess's."
"Which dress am I to get ready?"
Chapter 17
The croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited
Anna was to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two
ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg
circle, nicknamed, in imitation of some imitation, _les sept
merveilles du monde_. These ladies belonged to a circle which,
though of the highest society, was utterly hostile to that in
which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of the most influential
people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of Liza Merkalova,
was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy in the political world. From
all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the hints
in Princess Tverskaya's note referred to her refusal. But now
Anna was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky.
Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya's earlier than the other
guests.
At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky's footman, with
side-whiskers combed out like a _Kammerjunker_, went in too.
He stopped at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass.
Anna recognized him, and only then recalled that Vronsky had
told her the day before that he would not come. Most likely
he was sending a note to say so.
As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the
footman, pronouncing his "r's" even like a _Kammerjunker_, say,
"From the count for the princess," and hand the note.
She longed to question him as to where his master was. She
longed to turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or
to go herself to see him. But neither the first nor the second
nor the third course was possible. Already she heard bells
ringing to announce her arrival ahead of her, and Princess
Tverskaya's footman was standing at the open door waiting for her
to go forward into the inner rooms.
"The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately.
Would you be pleased to walk into the garden?" announced another
footman in another room.
The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as
at home--worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any
step, impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among
outsiders, in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But
she was wearing a dress that she knew suited her. She was not
alone; all around was that luxurious setting of idleness that she
was used to, and she felt less wretched than at home. She was
not forced to think what she was to do. Everything would be done
of itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her in a white gown
that struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her just as she
always did. Princess Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch and
a young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in
the provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable
princess.
There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy
noticed it at once.
"I slept badly," answered Anna, looking intently at the footman
who came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky's
note.
"How glad I am you've come!" said Betsy. "I'm tired, and was
just longing to have some tea before they come. You might go"--
she turned to Tushkevitch--"with Masha, and try the croquet
ground over there where they've been cutting it. We shall have
time to talk a little over tea; we'll have a cozy chat, eh?" she
said in English to Anna, with a smile, pressing the hand with
which she held a parasol.
"Yes, especially as I can't stay very long with you. I'm forced
to go on to old Madame Vrede. I've been promising to go for a
century," said Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her
nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society, but
a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said this, which she
had not thought of a second before, she could not have explained.
She had said it simply from the reflection that as Vronsky would
not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to
see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede,
whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people,
she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned
out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky,
she could have thought of nothing better.
"No. I'm not going to let you go for anything," answered Betsy,
looking intently into Anna's face. "Really, if I were not fond
of you, I should feel offended. One would think you were afraid
my society would compromise you. Tea in the little dining room,
please," she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when
addressing the footman.
Taking the note from him, she read it.
"Alexey's playing us false," she said in French; "he writes that
he can't come," she added in a tone as simple and natural as
though it could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean
anything more to Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that
Betsy knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Vronsky
before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew
nothing.
"Ah!" said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested
in the matter, and she went on smiling: "How can you or your
friends compromise anyone?"
This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great
fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it
was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the
concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself
which attracted her.
"I can't be more Catholic than the Pope," she said. "Stremov
and Liza Merkalova, why, they're the cream of the cream of
society. Besides, they're received everywhere, and _I_"--she
laid special stress on the I--"have never been strict and
intolerant. It's simply that I haven't the time."
"No; you don't care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and
Alexey Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee--
that's no affair of ours. But in the world, he's the most
amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet player. You shall see.
And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza's lovesick swain at
his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position.
He's very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don't know? Oh, that's a new
type, quite new."
Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her
good-humored, shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed
her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They
were in the little boudoir.
"I must write to Alexey though," and Betsy sat down to the
table, scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.
"I'm telling him to come to dinner. I've one lady extra to
dinner with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I've said,
will that persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a
minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?" she said
from the door; "I have to give some directions."
Without a moment's thought, Anna sat down to the table with
Betsy's letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: "It's
essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall
be there at six o'clock." She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming
back, in her presence handed the note to be taken.
At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool
little drawing room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya
before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between
the two women. They criticized the people they were expecting,
and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova.
"She's very sweet, and I always liked her," said Anna.
"You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came
up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you.
She says you're a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a
man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov
says she does that as it is."
"But do tell me, please, I never could make it out," said Anna,
after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed
she was not asking an idle question, but that what she was asking
was of more importance to her than it should have been; "do tell
me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka,
as he's called? I've met them so little. What does it mean?"
Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.
"It's a new manner," she said. "They've all adopted that manner.
They've flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways
and ways of flinging them."
"Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?"
Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible
laughter, a thing which rarely happened with her.
"You're encroaching on Princess Myakaya's special domain now.
That's the question of an _enfant terrible_," and Betsy obviously
tried to restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals
of that infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh
often. "You'd better ask them," she brought out, between tears
of laughter.
"No; you laugh," said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself,
"but I never could understand it. I can't understand the
husband's role in it."
"The husband? Liza Merkalova's husband carries her shawl, and is
always ready to be of use. But anything more than that in
reality, no one cares to inquire. You know in decent society one
doesn't talk or think even of certain details of the toilet.
That's how it is with this."
"Will you be at Madame Rolandak's fete?" asked Anna, to change
the conversation.
"I don't think so," answered Betsy, and, without looking at her
friend, she began filling the little transparent cups with
fragrant tea. Putting a cup before Anna, she took out a
cigarette, and, fitting it into a silver holder, she lighted it.
"It's like this, you see: I'm in a fortunate position," she
began, quite serious now, as she took up her cup. "I understand
you, and I understand Liza. Liza now is one of those naive
natures that, like children, don't know what's good and what's
bad. Anyway, she didn't comprehend it when she was very young.
And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension suits her.
Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy, with a
subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing,
don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a
misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously.
Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically."
"How I should like to know other people just as I know myself!"
said Anna, seriously and dreamily. "Am I worse than other
people, or better? I think I'm worse."
"_Enfant terrible, enfant terrible!_" repeated Betsy. "But here
they are."
Chapter 18
They heard the sound of steps and a man's voice, then a woman's
voice and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in
the expected guests: Sappho Shtoltz, and a young man beaming with
excess of health, the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample
supplies of beefsteak, truffles, and Burgundy never failed to
reach him at the fitting hour. Vaska bowed to the two ladies,
and glanced at them, but only for one second. He walked after
Sappho into the drawing-room, and followed her about as though he
were chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes fixed on her as
though he wanted to eat her. Sappho Shtoltz was a blonde beauty
with black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in
high-heeled shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously
like a man.
Anna had never met this new star of fashion, and was struck by
her beauty, the exaggerated extreme to which her dress was
carried, and the boldness of her manners. On her head there was
such a superstructure of soft, golden hair--her own and false
mixed--that her head was equal in size to the elegantly rounded
bust, of which so much was exposed in front. The impulsive
abruptness of her movements was such that at every step the lines
of her knees and the upper part of her legs were distinctly
marked under her dress, and the question involuntarily rose to
the mind where in the undulating, piled-up mountain of material
at the back the real body of the woman, so small and slender, so
naked in front, and so hidden behind and below, really came to an
end.
Betsy made haste to introduce her to Anna.
"Only fancy, we all but ran over two soldiers," she began telling
them at once, using her eyes, smiling and twitching away her
tail, which she flung back at one stroke all on one side. "I
drove here with Vaska.... Ah, to be sure, you don't know each
other." And mentioning his surname she introduced the young man,
and reddening a little, broke into a ringing laugh at her
mistake--that is, at her having called him Vaska to a stranger.
Vaska bowed once more to Anna, but he said nothing to her. He
addressed Sappho: "You've lost your bet. We got here first. Pay
up," said he, smiling.
Sappho laughed still more festively.
"Not just now," said she.
"Oh, all right, I'll have it later."
"Very well, very well. Oh, yes." She turned suddenly to
Princess Betsy: "I am a nice person...I positively forgot it...
I've brought you a visitor. And here he comes." The unexpected
young visitor, whom Sappho had invited, and whom she had
forgotten, was, however, a personage of such consequence that, in
spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on his entrance.
He was a new admirer of Sappho's. He now dogged her footsteps,
like Vaska.
Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with
Stremov. Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental,
languid type of face, and--as everyone used to say--exquisite
enigmatic eyes. The tone of her dark dress (Anna immediately
observed and appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with
her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and enervated as Sappho
was smart and abrupt.
But to Anna's taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said
to Anna that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but
when Anna saw her, she felt that this was not the truth. She
really was both innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive
woman. It is true that her tone was the same as Sappho's; that
like Sappho, she had two men, one young and one old, tacked onto
her, and devouring her with their eyes. But there was something
in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the
glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone
out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at
the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark
rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking
into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her,
could not but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face
lighted up at once with a smile of delight.
"Ah, how glad I am to see you!" she said, going up to her.
"Yesterday at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but
you'd gone away. I did so want to see you, yesterday especially.
Wasn't it awful?" she said, looking at Anna with eyes that seemed
to lay bare all her soul.
"Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling," said Anna,
blushing.
The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.
"I'm not going," said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to
Anna. "You won't go either, will you? Who wants to play
croquet?"
"Oh, I like it," said Anna.
"There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It's
delightful to look at you. You're alive, but I'm bored."
"How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in
Petersburg," said Anna.
"Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored;
but we--I certainly--are not happy, but awfully, awfully
bored."
Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two
young men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.
"What, bored!" said Betsy. "Sappho says they did enjoy
themselves tremendously at your house last night."
"Ah, how dreary it all was!" said Liza Merkalova. "We all drove
back to my place after the races. And always the same people,
always the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on
sofas all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do
tell me how you manage never to be bored?" she said, addressing
Anna again. "One has but to look at you and one sees, here's a
woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn't bored. Tell me how
you do it?"
"I do nothing," answered Anna, blushing at these searching
questions.
"That's the best way," Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of
fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but
with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was
his wife's niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her.
On meeting Anna Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch's enemy
in the government, he tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the
world, to be particularly cordial with her, the wife of his
enemy.
"'Nothing,'" he put in with a subtle smile, "that's the very best
way. I told you long ago," he said, turning to Liza Merkalova,
"that if you don't want to be bored, you mustn't think you're
going to be bored. It's just as you mustn't be afraid of not
being able to fall asleep, if you're afraid of sleeplessness.
That's just what Anna Arkadyevna has just said."
"I should be very glad if I had said it, for it's not only
clever but true," said Anna, smiling.
"No, do tell me why it is one can't go to sleep, and one can't
help being bored?"
"To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought
to work too."
"What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I
can't and won't knowingly make a pretense about it."
"You're incorrigible," said Stremov, not looking at her, and he
spoke again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing
but commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to
when she was returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia
Ivanovna was of her, with an expression which suggested that he
longed with his whole soul to please her and show his regard for
her and even more than that.
Tushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the
other players to begin croquet.
"No, don't go away, please don't," pleaded Liza Merkalova,
hearing that Anna was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.
"It's too violent a transition," he said, "to go from such
company to old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her
a chance for talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such
different feelings of the highest and most opposite kind," he
said to her.
Anna pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man's
flattering words, the naive, childlike affection shown her by
Liza Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,--
it was all so easy, and what was in store for her was so
difficult, that she was for a minute in uncertainty whether to
remain, whether to put off a little longer the painful moment of
explanation. But remembering what was in store for her alone at
home, if she did not come to some decision, remembering that
gesture--terrible even in memory--when she had clutched her
hair in both hands--she said good-bye and went away.
Chapter 19
In spite of Vronsky's apparently frivolous life in society, he
was a man who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of
Pages, he had experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he
had tried, being in difficulties, to borrow money, and since then
he had never once put himself in the same position again.
In order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about
five times a year (more or less frequently, according to
circumstances) to shut himself up alone and put all his affairs
into definite shape. This he used to call his day of reckoning
or _faire la lessive_.
On waking up the day after the races, Vronsky put on a white
linen coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he
distributed about the table moneys, bills, and letters, and set
to work. Petritsky, who knew he was ill-tempered on such
occasions, on waking up and seeing his comrade at the
writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without getting in
his way.
Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of
the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the
complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them
clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to
himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as
complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it
seemed to Vronsky. And not without inward pride, and not
without reason, he thought that any other man would long ago have
been in difficulties, would have been forced to some dishonorable
course, if he had found himself in such a difficult position.
But Vronsky felt that now especially it was essential for him to
clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into
difficulties.
What Vronsky attacked first as being the easiest was his
pecuniary position. Writing out on note paper in his minute hand
all that he owed, he added up the amount and found that his debts
amounted to seventeen thousand and some odd hundreds, which he
left out for the sake of clearness. Reckoning up his money and
his bank book, he found that he had left one thousand eight
hundred roubles, and nothing coming in before the New Year.
Reckoning over again his list of debts, Vronsky copied it,
dividing it into three classes. In the first class he put the
debts which he would have to pay at once, or for which he must in
any case have the money ready so that on demand for payment there
could not be a moment's delay in paying. Such debts amounted to
about four thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and
two thousand five hundred as surety for a young comrade,
Venovsky, who had lost that sum to a cardsharper in Vronsky's
presence. Vronsky had wanted to pay the money at the time (he
had that amount then), but Venovsky and Yashvin had insisted that
they would pay and not Vronsky, who had not played. That was so
far well, but Vronsky knew that in this dirty business, though
his only share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be
surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for him to have
the two thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling
it at the swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for
this first and most important division he must have four thousand
roubles. The second class--eight thousand roubles--consisted
of less important debts. These were principally accounts owing
in connection with his race horses, to the purveyor of oats and
hay, the English saddler, and so on. He would have to pay some
two thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to be quite
free from anxiety. The last class of debts--to shops, to
hotels, to his tailor--were such as need not be considered. So
that he needed at least six thousand roubles for current
expenses, and he only had one thousand eight hundred. For a man
with one hundred thousand roubles of revenue, which was what
everyone fixed as Vronsky's income, such debts, one would
suppose, could hardly be embarrassing; but the fact was that he
was far from having one hundred thousand. His father's immense
property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two hundred
thousand, was left undivided between the brothers. At the time
when the elder brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess
Varya Tchirkova, the daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune
whatever, Alexey had given up to his elder brother almost the
whole income from his father's estate, reserving for himself only
twenty-five thousand a year from it. Alexey had said at the time
to his brother that that sum would be sufficient for him until he
married, which he probably never would do. And his brother, who
was in command of one of the most expensive regiments, and was
only just married, could not decline the gift. His mother, who
had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every year
twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had
reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother,
incensed with him on account of his love affair and his leaving
Moscow, had given up sending him the money. And in consequence
of this, Vronsky, who had been in the habit of living on the
scale of forty-five thousand a year, having only received twenty
thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties. To get
out of these difficulties, he could not apply to his mother for
money. Her last letter, which he had received the day before,
had particularly exasperated him by the hints in it that she was
quite ready to help him to succeed in the world and in the army,
but not to lead a life which was a scandal to all good society.
His mother's attempt to buy him stung him to the quick and made
him feel colder than ever to her. But he could not draw back
from the generous word when it was once uttered, even though he
felt now, vaguely foreseeing certain eventualities in his
intrigue with Madame Karenina, that this generous word had been
spoken thoughtlessly, and that even though he were not married he
might need all the hundred thousand of income. But it was
impossible to draw back. He had only to recall his brother's
wife, to remember how that sweet, delightful Varya sought, at
every convenient opportunity, to remind him that she remembered
his generosity and appreciated it, to grasp the impossibility of
taking back his gift. It was as impossible as beating a woman,
stealing, or lying. One thing only could and ought to be done,
and Vronsky determined upon it without an instant's hesitation:
to borrow money from a money-lender, ten thousand roubles, a
proceeding which presented no difficulty, to cut down his
expenses generally, and to sell his race horses. Resolving on
this, he promptly wrote a note to Rolandak, who had more than
once sent to him with offers to buy horses from him. Then he
sent for the Englishman and the money-lender, and divided what
money he had according to the accounts he intended to pay.
Having finished this business, he wrote a cold and cutting answer
to his mother. Then he took out of his notebook three notes of
Anna's, read them again, burned them, and remembering their
conversation on the previous day, he sank into meditation.
Chapter 20
Vronsky's life was particularly happy in that he had a code of
principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought
and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered
only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the
principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went
outside that circle, had never had a moment's hesitation about
doing what he ought to do. These principles laid down as
invariable rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not
pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one
may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a
husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give
one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and
not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he
adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he
could hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his
relations with Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of
principles did not fully cover all possible contingencies, and to
foresee in the future difficulties and perplexities for which he
could find no guiding clue.
His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind
clear and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the
code of principles by which he was guided.
She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him,
and he loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who
had a right to the same, or even more, respect than a lawful
wife. He would have had his hand chopped off before he would
have allowed himself by a word, by a hint, to humiliate her, or
even to fall short of the fullest respect a woman could look for.
His attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know,
might suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any
did so, he was ready to force all who might speak to be silent
and to respect the non-existent honor of the woman he loved.
His attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. From the
moment that Anna loved Vronsky, he had regarded his own right
over her as the one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a
superfluous and tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable
position, but how could that be helped? The one thing the
husband had a right to was to demand satisfaction with a weapon
in his hand, and Vronsky was prepared for this at any minute.
But of late new inner relations had arisen between him and her,
which frightened Vronsky by their indefiniteness. Only the day
before she had told him that she was with child. And he felt
that this fact and what she expected of him called for something
not fully defined in that code of principles by which he had
hitherto steered his course in life. And he had been indeed
caught unawares, and at the first moment when she spoke to him of
her position, his heart had prompted him to beg her to leave her
husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he saw
clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at
the same time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it
was not wrong.
"If I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her
life with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away
now, when I have no money? Supposing I could arrange.... But
how can I take her away while I'm in the service? If I say
that--I ought to be prepared to do it, that is, I ought to have
the money and to retire from the army."
And he grew thoughtful. The question whether to retire from the
service or not brought him to the other and perhaps the chief
though hidden interest of his life, of which none knew but he.
Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream
which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so
strong that now this passion was even doing battle with his love.
His first steps in the world and in the service had been
successful, but two years before he had made a great mistake.
Anxious to show his independence and to advance, he had refused a
post that had been offered him, hoping that this refusal would
heighten his value; but it turned out that he had been too bold,
and he was passed over. And having, whether he liked or not,
taken up for himself the position of an independent man, he
carried it off with great tact and good sense, behaving as though
he bore no grudge against anyone, did not regard himself as
injured in any way, and cared for nothing but to be left alone
since he was enjoying himself. In reality he had ceased to enjoy
himself as long ago as the year before, when he went away to
Moscow. He felt that this independent attitude of a man who
might have done anything, but cared to do nothing, was already
beginning to pall, that many people were beginning to fancy that
he was not really capable of anything but being a
straightforward, good-natured fellow. His connection with Madame
Karenina, by creating so much sensation and attracting general
attention, had given him a fresh distinction which soothed his
gnawing worm of ambition for a while, but a week before that worm
had been roused up again with fresh force. The friend of his
childhood, a man of the same set, of the same coterie, his
comrade in the Corps of Pages, Serpuhovskoy, who had left school
with him and had been his rival in class, in gymnastics, in their
scrapes and their dreams of glory, had come back a few days
before from Central Asia, where he had gained two steps up in
rank, and an order rarely bestowed upon generals so young.
As soon as he arrived in Petersburg, people began to talk about
him as a newly risen star of the first magnitude. A schoolfellow
of Vronsky's and of the same age, he was a general and was
expecting a command, which might have influence on the course of
political events; while Vronsky, independent and brilliant and
beloved by a charming woman though he was, was simply a cavalry
captain who was readily allowed to be as independent as ever he
liked. "Of course I don't envy Serpuhovskoy and never could
envy him; but his advancement shows me that one has only to watch
one's opportunity, and the career of a man like me may be very
rapidly made. Three years ago he was in just the same position
as I am. If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the army,
I lose nothing. She said herself she did not wish to change her
position. And with her love I cannot feel envious of
Serpuhovskoy." And slowly twirling his mustaches, he got up from
the table and walked about the room. His eyes shone particularly
brightly, and he felt in that confident, calm, and happy frame of
mind which always came after he had thoroughly faced his
position. Everything was straight and clear, just as after
former days of reckoning. He shaved, took a cold bath, dressed
and went out.
Chapter 21
"We've come to fetch you. Your _lessive_ lasted a good time
today," said Petritsky. "Well, is it over?"
"It is over," answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and
twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though
after the perfect order into which his affairs had been brought
any over-bold or rapid movement might disturb it.
"You're always just as if you'd come out of a bath after it,"
said Petritsky. "I've come from Gritsky's" (that was what they
called the colonel); "they're expecting you."
Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of
something else.
"Yes; is that music at his place?" he said, listening to the
familiar sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to him.
"What's the fete?"
"Serpuhovskoy's come."
"Aha!" said Vronsky, "why, I didn't know."
The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.
Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that
he sacrificed his ambition to it--having anyway taken up this
position, Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of
Serpuhovskoy or hurt with him for not coming first to him when he
came to the regiment. Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was
delighted he had come.
"Ah, I'm very glad!"
The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole
party were in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first
objects that met Vronsky's eyes were a band of singers in white
linen coats, standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust,
good-humored figure of the colonel surrounded by officers. He
had gone out as far as the first step of the balcony and was
loudly shouting across the band that played Offenbach's
quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few
soldiers standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a
quartermaster, and several subalterns came up to the balcony with
Vronsky. The colonel returned to the table, went out again onto
the steps with a tumbler in his hand, and proposed the toast, "To
the health of our former comrade, the gallant general, Prince
Serpuhovskoy. Hurrah!"
The colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the
steps smiling, with a glass in his hand.
"You always get younger, Bondarenko," he said to the
rosy-checked, smart-looking quartermaster standing just before
him, still youngish looking though doing his second term of
service.
It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpuhovskoy. He
looked more robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the
same graceful creature, whose face and figure were even more
striking from their softness and nobility than their beauty. The
only change Vronsky detected in him was that subdued, continual
radiance of beaming content which settles on the faces of men who
are successful and are sure of the recognition of their success
by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant air, and immediately
observed it in Serpuhovskoy.
As Serpuhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of
pleasure lighted up his face. He tossed his head upwards and
waved the glass in his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by
the gesture that he could not come to him before the
quartermaster, who stood craning forward his lips ready to be
kissed.
"Here he is!" shouted the colonel. "Yashvin told me you were in
one of your gloomy tempers."
Serpuhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the gallant-looking
quartermaster, and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, went
up to Vronsky.
"How glad I am!" he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him on
one side.
"You look after him," the colonel shouted to Yashvin, pointing to
Vronsky; and he went down below to the soldiers.
"Why weren't you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you
there," said Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpuhovskoy.
"I did go, but late. I beg your pardon," he added, and he
turned to the adjutant: "Please have this divided from me, each
man as much as it runs to." And he hurriedly took notes for
three hundred roubles from his pocketbook, blushing a little.
"Vronsky! Have anything to eat or drink?" asked Yashvin. "Hi,
something for the count to eat! Ah, here it is: have a glass!"
The fete at the colonel's lasted a long while. There was a great
deal of drinking. They tossed Serpuhovskoy in the air and caught
him again several times. Then they did the same to the colonel.
Then, to the accompaniment of the band, the colonel himself
danced with Petritsky. Then the colonel, who began to show signs
of feebleness, sat down on a bench in the courtyard and began
demonstrating to Yashvin the superiority of Russia over Poland,
especially in cavalry attack, and there was a lull in the revelry
for a moment. Serpuhovskoy went into the house to the bathroom
to wash his hands and found Vronsky there; Vronsky was drenching
his head with water. He had taken off his coat and put his
sunburnt, hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and his
head with his hands. When he had finished, Vronsky sat down by
Serpuhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge,
and a conversation began which was very interesting to both of
them.
"I've always been hearing about you through my wife," said
Serpuhovskoy. "I'm glad you've been seeing her pretty often."
"She's friendly with Varya, and they're the only women in
Petersburg I care about seeing," answered Vronsky, smiling. He
smiled because he foresaw the topic the conversation would turn
on, and he was glad of it.
"The only ones?" Serpuhovskoy queried, smiling.
"Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife,"
said Vronsky, checking his hint by a stern expression of face.
"I was greatly delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit
surprised. I expected even more."
Serpuhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously
agreeable to him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal
it.
"Well, I on the contrary expected less--I'll own frankly. But
I'm glad, very glad. I'm ambitious; that's my weakness, and I
confess to it."
"Perhaps you wouldn't confess to it if you hadn't been
successful," said Vronsky.
"I don't suppose so," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. "I
won't say life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would
be dull. Of course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a
certain capacity for the line I've chosen, and that power of any
sort in my hands, if it is to be, will be better than in the
hands of a good many people I know," said Serpuhovskoy, with
beaming consciousness of success; "and so the nearer I get to it,
the better pleased I am."
"Perhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to
think so too, but here I live and think life worth living not
only for that."
"There it's out! here it comes!" said Serpuhovskoy, laughing.
"Ever since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began....
Of course, I approved of what you did. But there are ways of
doing everything. And I think your action was good in itself,
but you didn't do it quite in the way you ought to have done."
"What's done can't be undone, and you know I never go back on
what I've done. And besides, I'm very well off."
"Very well off--for the time. But you're not satisfied with
that. I wouldn't say this to your brother. He's a nice child,
like our host here. There he goes!" he added, listening to the
roar of "hurrah!"--"and he's happy, but that does not satisfy
you."
"I didn't say it did satisfy me."
"Yes, but that's not the only thing. Such men as you are
wanted."
"By whom?"
"By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men; she needs a
party, or else everything goes and will go to the dogs."
"How do you mean? Bertenev's party against the Russian
communists?"
"No," said Serpuhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being
suspected of such an absurdity. "_Tout ca est une blague_.
That's always been and always will be. There are no communists.
But intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party.
It's an old trick. No, what's wanted is a powerful party of
independent men like you and me."
"But why so?" Vronsky mentioned a few men who were in power.
"Why aren't they independent men?"
"Simply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an
independent fortune; they've not had a name, they've not been
close to the sun and center as we have. They can be bought
either by money or by favor. And they have to find a support for
themselves in inventing a policy. And they bring forward some
notion, some policy that they don't believe in, that does harm;
and the whole policy is really only a means to a government house
and so much income. _Cela n'est pas plus fin que ca_, when you get
a peep at their cards. I may be inferior to them, stupider
perhaps, though I don't see why I should be inferior to them.
But you and I have one important advantage over them for certain,
in being more difficult to buy. And such men are more needed
than ever."
Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested
by the meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpuhovskoy
who was already contemplating a struggle with the existing
powers, and already had his likes and dislikes in that higher
world, while his own interest in the governing world did not go
beyond the interests of his regiment. Vronsky felt, too, how
powerful Serpuhovskoy might become through his unmistakable
faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in, through
his intelligence and gift of words, so rarely met with in the
world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was of the feeling,
he felt envious.
"Still I haven't the one thing of most importance for that," he
answered; "I haven't the desire for power. I had it once, but
it's gone."
"Excuse me, that's not true," said Serpuhovskoy, smiling.
"Yes, it is true, it is true...now!" Vronsky added, to be
truthful.
"Yes, it's true now, that's another thing; but that _now_ won't
last forever."
"Perhaps," answered Vronsky.
"You say _perhaps_," Serpuhovskoy went on, as though guessing his
thoughts, "but I say _for certain_. And that's what I wanted to
see you for. Your action was just what it should have been. I
see that, but you ought not to keep it up. I only ask you to
give me carte blanche. I'm not going to offer you my
protection...though, indeed, why shouldn't I protect you?--
you've protected me often enough! I should hope our friendship
rises above all that sort of thing. Yes," he said, smiling to
him as tenderly as a woman, "give me _carte blanche_, retire from
the regiment, and I'll draw you upwards imperceptibly."
"But you must understand that I want nothing," said Vronsky,
"except that all should be as it is."
Serpuhovskoy got up and stood facing him.
"You say that all should be as it is. I understand what that
means. But listen: we're the same age, you've known a greater
number of women perhaps than I have." Serpohovskoy's smile and
gestures told Vronsky that he mustn't be afraid, that he would be
tender and careful in touching the sore place. "But I'm married,
and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one
loves her, as someone has said, one gets to know all women better
than if one knew thousands of them."
"We're coming directly!" Vronsky shouted to an officer, who
looked into the room and called them to the colonel.
Vronsky was longing now to hear to the end and know what
Serpuhovskey would say to him.
"And here's my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling
block in a man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do
anything. There's only one way of having love conveniently
without its being a hindrance--that's marriage. How, how am I
to tell you what I mean?" said Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes, just as you can only carry a
_fardeau_ and do something with your hands, when the fardeau is
tied on your back, and that's marriage. And that's what I felt
when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But to
drag that _fardeau_ about with you without marriage, your hands
will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at
Mazankov, at Krupov. They've ruined their careers for the sake
of women."
"What women!" said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the
actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.
"The firmer the woman's footing in society, the worse it is.
That's much the same as--not merely carrying the _fardeau_ in
your arms--but tearing it away from someone else."
"You have never loved," Vronsky said softly, looking straight
before him and thinking of Anna.
"Perhaps. But you remember what I've said to you. And another
thing, women are all more materialistic than men. We make
something immense out of love, but they are always
_terre-a-terre_."
"Directly, directly!" he cried to a footman who came in. But the
footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The
footman brought Vronsky a note.
"A man brought it from Princess Tverskaya."
Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson.
"My head's begun to ache; I'm going home," he said to
Serpuhovskoy.
"Oh, good-bye then. You give me _carte blanche!_"
"We'll talk about it later on; I'll look you up in Petersburg."
Chapter 22
It was six o'clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly,
and at the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to
everyone, Vronsky got into Yashvin's hired fly, and told the
driver to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy,
old-fashioned fly, with seats for four. He sat in one corner,
stretched his legs out on the front seat, and sank into
meditation.
A vague sense of the order into which his affairs had been
brought, a vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of
Serpuhovskoy, who had considered him a man that was needed, and
most of all, the anticipation of the interview before him--all
blended into a general, joyous sense of life. This feeling was
so strong that he could not help smiling. He dropped his legs,
crossed one leg over the other knee, and taking it in his hand,
felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it had been grazed the
day before by his fall, and leaning back he drew several deep
breaths.
"I'm happy, very happy!" he said to himself. He had often before
had this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never
felt so fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He
enjoyed the slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the
muscular sensation of movement in his chest as he breathed. The
bright, cold August day, which had made Anna feel so hopeless,
seemed to him keenly stimulating, and refreshed his face and neck
that still tingled from the cold water. The scent of
brilliantine on his whiskers struck him as particularly pleasant
in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window,
everything in that cold pure air, in the pale light of the
sunset, was as fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the
roofs of the houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the
sharp outlines of fences and angles of buildings, the figures of
passers-by, the carriages that met him now and then, the
motionless green of the trees and grass, the fields with evenly
drawn furrows of potatoes, and the slanting shadows that fell
from the houses, and trees, and bushes, and even from the rows of
potatoes--everything was bright like a pretty landscape just
finished and freshly varnished.
"Get on, get on!" he said to the driver, putting his head out of
the window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he
handed it to the man as he looked round. The driver's hand
fumbled with something at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the
carriage rolled rapidly along the smooth highroad.
"I want nothing, nothing but this happiness," he thought,
staring at the bone button of the bell in the space between the
windows, and picturing to himself Anna just as he had seen her
last time. "And as I go on, I love her more and more. Here's
the garden of the Vrede Villa. Whereabouts will she be? Where?
How? Why did she fix on this place to meet me, and why does she
write in Betsy's letter?" he thought, wondering now for the first
time at it. But there was now no time for wonder. He called to
the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and opening the
door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went into
the avenue that led up to the house. There was no one in the
avenue; but looking round to the right he caught sight of her.
Her face was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the
special movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of
the shoulders, and the setting of the head, and at once a sort of
electric shock ran all over him. With fresh force, he felt
conscious of himself from the springy motions of his legs to the
movements of his lungs as he breathed, and something set his lips
twitching.
Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.
"You're not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see
you," she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which
he saw under the veil, transformed his mood at once.
"I angry! But how have you come, where from?"
"Never mind," she said, laying her hand on his, "come along, I
must talk to you."
He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would
not be a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own:
without knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the
same distress unconsciously passing over him.
"What is it? what?" he asked her, squeezing her hand with his
elbow, and trying to read her thoughts in her face.
She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage;
then suddenly she stopped.
"I did not tell you yesterday," she began, breathing quickly and
painfully, "that coming home with Alexey Alexandrovitch I told
him everything...told him I could not be his wife, that...and
told him everything."
He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her
as though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her
position for her. But directly she had said this he suddenly
drew himself up, and a proud and hard expression came over his
face.
"Yes, yes, that's better, a thousand times better! I know how
painful it was," he said. But she was not listening to his
words, she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his
face. She could not guess that that expression arose from the
first idea that presented itself to Vronsky--that a duel was now
inevitable. The idea of a duel had never crossed her mind, and
so she put a different interpretation on this passing expression
of hardness.
When she got her husband's letter, she knew then at the bottom of
her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she
would not have the strength of will to forego her position, to
abandon her son, and to join her lover. The morning spent at
Princess Tverskaya's had confirmed her still more in this. But
this interview was still of the utmost gravity for her. She
hoped that this interview would transform her position, and save
her. If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely,
passionately, without an instant's wavering: "Throw up everything
and come with me!" she would give up her son and go away with
him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in
him; he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.
"It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,"
she said irritably; "and see..." she pulled her husband's letter
out of her glove.
"I understand, I understand," he interrupted her, taking the
letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. "The one
thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut
short this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness."
"Why do you tell me that?" she said. "Do you suppose I can doubt
it? If I doubted..."
"Who's that coming?" said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two
ladies walking towards them. "Perhaps they know us!" and he
hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him into a side path.
"Oh, I don't care!" she said. Her lips were quivering. And he
fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under
the veil. "I tell you that's not the point--I can't doubt that;
but see what he writes to me. Read it." She stood still again.
Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with
her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously
carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own
relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter
in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he
would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel
itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that
his face was assuming at this moment he would await the injured
husband's shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at
that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what
Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been
thinking in the morning--that it was better not to bind himself
--and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.
Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was
no determination in them. She saw at once that he had been
thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he
might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew
that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had
been reckoning on.
"You see the sort of man he is," she said, with a shaking voice;
"he..."
"Forgive me, but I rejoice at it," Vronsky interrupted. "For
God's sake, let me finish!" he added, his eyes imploring her to
give him time to explain his words. "I rejoice, because things
cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes."
"Why can't they?" Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously
attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that
her fate was sealed.
Vronsky meant that after the duel--inevitable, he thought--
things could not go on as before, but he said something
different.
"It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope"--
he was confused, and reddened--"that you will let me arrange and
plan our life. Tomorrow..." he was beginning.
She did not let him go on.
"But my child!" she shrieked. "You see what he writes! I should
have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that."
"But, for God's sake, which is better?--leave your child, or
keep up this degrading position?"
"To whom is it degrading?"
"To all, and most of all to you."
"You say degrading...don't say that. Those words have no meaning
for me," she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now
to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love,
and she wanted to love him. "Don't you understand that from the
day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is
one thing, and one thing only--your love. If that's mine, I
feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to
me. I am proud of my position, because...proud of being...
proud...." She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of
shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and
sobbed.
He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in
his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point
of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched
him so. He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help
her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her
wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.
"Is not a divorce possible?" he said feebly. She shook her head,
not answering. "Couldn't you take your son, and still leave
him?"
"Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him," she
said shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the
old way had not deceived her.
"On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be
settled."
"Yes," she said. "But don't let us talk any more of it."
Anna's carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come
back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said
good-bye to Vronsky, and drove home.
Chapter 23
On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the
2nd of June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where
the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as
usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers
laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary
evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make.
But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every
point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory
what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he
saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an
expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself
better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of
his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have
weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the
most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white
hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly
stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at
the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side,
would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words
would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set
the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the
president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexey
Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he
had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the
Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All
attention was turned upon him. Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his
throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he
always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person
sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never
had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound
his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental and
radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest.
Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung
to the quick, began defending himself, and altogether a stormy
sitting followed; but Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his
motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the
next day in a certain Petersburg circle nothing else was talked
of but this sitting. Alexey Alexandrovitch's success had been
even greater than he had anticipated.
Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up,
recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he
could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent,
when the chief secretary of his department, anxious to flatter
him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning
what had happened in the Commission.
Absorbed in business with the chief secretary, Alexey
Alexandrovitch had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the
day fixed by him for the return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was
surprised and received a shock of annoyance when a servant came
in to inform him of her arrival.
Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage
had been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so
Alexey Alexandrovitch might have known of her arrival. But when
she arrived, he did not meet her. She was told that he had not
yet gone out, but was busy with his secretary. She sent word to
her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied
herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to
her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She went into the
dining room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke
loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did
not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study as he
parted from the chief secretary. She knew that he usually went
out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that,
so that their attitude to one another might be defined.
She walked across the drawing room and went resolutely to him.
When she went into his study he was in official uniform,
obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he
rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him
before he saw her, and she saw that he was thinking of her.
On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then
his face flushed hotly--a thing Anna had never seen before, and
he got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes,
but above them at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took
her by the hand, and asked her to sit down.
"I am very glad you have come," he said, sitting down beside her,
and obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several
times he tried to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the
fact that, preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled
herself to despise and reproach him, she did not know what to say
to him, and she felt sorry for him. And so the silence lasted
for some time. "Is Seryozha quite well?" he said, and not
waiting for an answer, he added: "I shan't be dining at home
today, and I have got to go out directly."
"I had thought of going to Moscow," she said.
"No, you did quite, quite right to come," he said, and was silent
again.
Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began
herself.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch," she said, looking at him and not
dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, "I'm a
guilty woman, I'm a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I
told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change
nothing."
"I have asked you no question about that," he said, all at once,
resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face;
"that was as I had supposed." Under the influence of anger he
apparently regained complete possession of all his faculties.
"But as I told you then, and have written to you," he said in a
thin, shrill voice, "I repeat now, that I am not bound to know
this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in
such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their
husbands." He laid special emphasis on the word "agreeable." "I
shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long
as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that
our relations must be just as they have always been, and that
only in the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to
take steps to secure my honor."
"But our relations cannot be the same as always," Anna began in a
timid voice, looking at him with dismay.
When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that
shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him
extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at
all costs she wanted to make clear her position.
"I cannot be your wife while I..." she began.
He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.
"The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in
your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both...I
respect your past and despise your present...that I was far from
the interpretation you put on my words."
Anna sighed and bowed her head.
"Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence
you show," he went on, getting hot, "--announcing your infidelity
to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it,
apparently--you can see anything reprehensible in performing a
wife's duties in relation to your husband."
"Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?"
"I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so
that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you...not to
see him. That's not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy
all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her
duties. That's all I have to say to you. Now it's time for me
to go. I'm not dining at home." He got up and moved towards the
door.
Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.
Chapter 24
The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without
result for him. The way in which he had been managing his land
revolted him and had lost all attraction for him. In spite of
the magnificent harvest, never had there been, or, at least,
never it seemed to him, had there been so many hindrances and so
many quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the
origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly
comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the
work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the
peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to
adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but
an intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail
--all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land
as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest
in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between
him and the workpeople which was the foundation of it all. The
herd of improved cows such as Pava, the whole land ploughed over
and enriched, the nine level fields surrounded with hedges, the
two hundred and forty acres heavily manured, the seed sown in
drills, and all the rest of it--it was all splendid if only the
work had been done for themselves, or for themselves and comrades
--people in sympathy with them. But he saw clearly now (his work
on a book of agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry
was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that
the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel
and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which
there was on one side--his side--a continual intense effort to
change everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other
side, the natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw
that with immense expenditure of force on his side, and with no
effort or even intention on the other side, all that was attained
was that the work did not go to the liking of either side, and
that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled with
no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy expended on this
work was not simply wasted. He could not help feeling now, since
the meaning of this system had become clear to him, that the aim
of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the
struggle about? He was struggling for every farthing of his
share (and he could not help it, for he had only to relax his
efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay his laborers'
wages), while they were only struggling to be able to do their
work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as they were used to
doing it. It was for his interests that every laborer should
work as hard as possible, and that while doing so he should keep
his wits about him, so as to try not to break the winnowing
machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing machines, that he should
attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to work
as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly
and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw this at
every step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking
out the worst patches where the clover was overgrown with grass
and weeds and of no use for seed; again and again they mowed the
best acres of clover, justifying themselves by the pretense that
the bailiff had told them to, and trying to pacify him with the
assurance that it would be splendid hay; but he knew that it was
owing to those acres being so much easier to mow. He sent out a
hay machine for pitching the hay--it was broken at the first row
because it was dull work for a peasant to sit on the seat in
front with the great wings waving above him. And he was told,
"Don't trouble, your honor, sure, the womenfolks will pitch it
quick enough." The ploughs were practically useless, because it
never occurred to the laborer to raise the share when he turned
the plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses and tore
up the ground, and Levin was begged not to mind about it. The
horses were allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single
laborer would consent to be night-watchman, and in spite of
orders to the contrary, the laborers insisted on taking turns for
night duty, and Ivan, after working all day long, fell asleep,
and was very penitent for his fault, saying, "Do what you will to
me, your honor."
They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the
clover aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing
would make the men believe that they had been blown out by the
clover, but they told him, by way of consolation, that one of his
neighbors had lost a hundred and twelve head of cattle in three
days. All this happened, not because anyone felt ill-will to
Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he knew that they liked him,
thought him a simple gentleman (their highest praise); but it
happened simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and
carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and
incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just
claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own
position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked,
but he did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving
himself. (Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But
now he could deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land,
as he was managing it, had become not merely unattractive but
revolting to him, and he could take no further interest in it.
To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off,
of Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not
see. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was
over there, to come; to come with the object of renewing his
offer to her sister, who would, so she gave him to understand,
accept him now. Levin himself had felt on seeing Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love her; but he
could not go over to the Oblonskys', knowing she was there. The
fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him,
had placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. "I can't
ask her to be my wife merely because she can't be the wife of the
man she wanted to marry," he said to himself. The thought of
this made him cold and hostile to her. "I should not be able to
speak to her without a feeling of reproach; I could not look at
her without resentment; and she will only hate me all the more,
as she's bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what Darya
Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help showing that I
know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to forgive
her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before
her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What
induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might
have seen her, then everything would have happened of itself;
but, as it is, it's out of the question, out of the question!"
Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a
side-saddle for Kitty's use. "I'm told you have a side-saddle,"
she wrote to him; "I hope you will bring it over yourself."
This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any
intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a
humiliating position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up,
and sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would go
was impossible, because he could not go; to write that he could
not come because something prevented him, or that he would be
away, that was still worse. He sent the saddle without an
answer, and with a sense of having done something shameful; he
handed over all the now revolting business of the estate to the
bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his
friend Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his
neighborhood, and had lately written to ask him to keep a
long-standing promise to stay with him. The grouse-marsh, in the
Surovsky district, had long tempted Levin, but he had continually
put off this visit on account of his work on the estate. Now he
was glad to get away from the neighborhood of the Shtcherbatskys,
and still more from his farm work, especially on a shooting
expedition, which always in trouble served as the best
consolation.
Chapter 25
In the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of
post horses, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his
big, old-fashioned carriage.
He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant's to feed his horses.
A bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on
his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to
let the three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place
under the shed in the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred,
old-fashioned ploughs in it, the old man asked Levin to come into
the parlor. A cleanly dressed young woman, with clogs on her
bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She
was frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, and uttered a
shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was
told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin with her bare
arm to the door into the parlor, she bent down again, hiding her
handsome face, and went on scrubbing.
"Would you like the samovar?" she asked.
"Yes, please."
The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen
dividing it into two. Under the holy pictures stood a table
painted in patterns, a bench, and two chairs. Near the entrance
was a dresser full of crockery. The shutters were closed, there
were few flies, and it was so clean that Levin was anxious that
Laska, who had been running along the road and bathing in
puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered her to a place
in the corner by the door. After looking round the parlor, Levin
went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman in
clogs, swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to
the well for water.
"Look sharp, my girl!" the old man shouted after her,
good-humoredly, and he went up to Levin. "Well, sir, are you
going to Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His honor comes to us
too," he began, chatting, leaning his elbows on the railing of
the steps. In the middle of the old man's account of his
acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates creaked again, and
laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden ploughs
and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows
were sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of the
household: two were young men in cotton shirts and caps, the two
others were hired laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man,
the other a young fellow. Moving off from the steps, the old man
went up to the horses and began unharnessing them.
"What have they been ploughing?" asked Levin.
"Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot,
don't let out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we'll
put the other in harness."
"Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them
along?" asked the big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old
man's son.
"There...in the outer room," answered the old man, bundling
together the harness he had taken off, and flinging it on the
ground. "You can put them on, while they have dinner."
The good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the
full pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the
scene from somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and
ugly, with children and without children.
The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family,
having disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting
his provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take
tea with him.
"Well, I have had some today already," said the old man,
obviously accepting the invitation with pleasure. "But just a
glass for company."
Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man's farming. Ten
years before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the
lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented
another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part
of the land--the worst part--he let out for rent, while a
hundred acres of arable land he cultivated himself with his
family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that
things were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply did so
from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a
flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not
have bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not
have married his three sons and a nephew, he would not have
rebuilt twice after fires, and each time on a larger scale. In
spite of the old man's complaints, it was evident that he was
proud, and justly proud, of his prosperity, proud of his sons,
his nephew, his sons' wives, his horses and his cows, and
especially of the fact that he was keeping all this farming
going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin thought he
was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great
many potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past,
were already past flowering and beginning to die down, while
Levin's were only just coming into flower. He earthed up his
potatoes with a modern plough borrowed from a neighboring
landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact that, thinning out
his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned out for his horses,
specially struck Levin. How many times had Levin seen this
splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but always it
had turned out to be impossible. The peasant got this done, and
he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.
"What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to
the roadside, and the cart brings it away."
"Well, we landowners can't manage well with our laborers," said
Levin, handing him a glass of tea.
"Thank you," said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused
sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. "They're simple
destruction," said he. "Look at Sviazhsky's, for instance. We
know what the land's like--first-rate, yet there's not much of a
crop to boast of. It's not looked after enough--that's all it
is!"
"But you work your land with hired laborers?"
"We're all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves.
If a man's no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves."
"Father, Finogen wants some tar," said the young woman in the
clogs, coming in.
"Yes, yes, that's how it is, sir!" said the old man, getting up,
and crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Levin and went out.
When Levin went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the
whole family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on
them. The young, sturdy-looking son was telling something funny
with his mouth full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the
woman in the clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl,
laughing most merrily of all.
Very probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the
clogs had a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this
peasant household made upon Levin, but the impression was so
strong that Levin could never get rid of it. And all the way
from the old peasant's to Sviazhsky's he kept recalling this
peasant farm as though there were something in this impression
that demanded his special attention.
Chapter 26
Sviazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years
older than Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law,
a young girl Levin liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin
knew that Sviazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to
marry the girl to him. He knew this with certainty, as so-called
eligible young men always know it, though he could never have
brought himself to speak of it to anyone; and he knew too that,
although he wanted to get married, and although by every token
this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could
no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with
Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, than he could have flown up to the sky.
And this knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in
the visit to Sviazhsky.
On getting Sviazhsky's letter with the invitation for shooting,
Levin had immediately thought of this; but in spite of it he had
made up his mind that Sviazhsky's having such views for him was
simply his own groundless supposition, and so he would go, all
the same. Besides, at the bottom of his heart he had a desire to
try himself, put himself to the test in regard to this girl. The
Sviazhskys' home-life was exceedingly pleasant, and Sviazhsky
himself, the best type of man taking part in local affairs that
Levin knew, was very interesting to him.
Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to
Levin, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go
one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and
firm in its direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always
in direct contradiction to their convictions. Sviazhsky was an
extremely advanced man. He despised the nobility, and believed
the mass of the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and
only concealing their views from cowardice. He regarded Russia
as a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey, and the
government of Russia as so bad that he never permitted himself to
criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a functionary of
that government and a model marshal of nobility, and when he
drove about he always wore the cockade of office and the cap with
the red band. He considered human life only tolerable abroad,
and went abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same
time he carried on a complex and improved system of agriculture
in Russia, and with extreme interest followed everything and knew
everything that was being done in Russia. He considered the
Russian peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate
between the ape and the man, and at the same time in the local
assemblies no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants
and listen to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the
devil, but was much concerned about the question of the
improvement of the clergy and the maintenance of their revenues,
and took special trouble to keep up the church in his village.
On the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates
of complete liberty for women, and especially their right to
labor. But he lived with his wife on such terms that their
affectionate childless home life was the admiration of everyone,
and arranged his wife's life so that she did nothing and could do
nothing but share her husband's efforts that her time should pass
as happily and as agreeably as possible.
If it had not been a characteristic of Levin's to put the most
favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky's character would
have presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said
to himself, "a fool or a knave," and everything would have seemed
clear. But he could not say "a fool," because Sviazhsky was
unmistakably clever, and moreover, a highly cultivated man, who
was exceptionally modest over his culture. There was not a
subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge
except when he was compelled to do so. Still less could Levin
say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an honest,
good-hearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly,
and perseveringly at his work; he was held in high honor by
everyone about him, and certainly he had never consciously done,
and was indeed incapable of doing, anything base.
Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and
looked at him and his life as at a living enigma.
Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to
sound Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view
of life; but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to
penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind, which
were hospitably open to all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was
slightly disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his
eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would understand him, and he
would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.
Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was
particularly glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from the fact
that the sight of this happy and affectionate couple, so pleased
with themselves and everyone else, and their well-ordered home
had always a cheering effect on Levin, he felt a longing, now
that he was so dissatisfied with his own life, to get at that
secret in Sviazhsky that gave him such clearness, definiteness,
and good courage in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at
Sviazhsky's he should meet the landowners of the neighborhood,
and it was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and
take part in those rural conversations concerning crops,
laborers' wages, and so on, which, he was aware, are
conventionally regarded as something very low, but which seemed
to him just now to constitute the one subject of importance. "It
was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom, and it
may not be of importance in England. In both cases the
conditions of agriculture are firmly established; but among us
now, when everything has been turned upside down and is only just
taking shape, the question what form these conditions will take
is the one question of importance in Russia," thought Levin.
The shooting turned out to be worse than Levin had expected. The
marsh was dry and there were no grouse at all. He walked about
the whole day and only brought back three birds, but to make up
for that--he brought back, as he always did from shooting, an
excellent appetite, excellent spirits, and that keen,
intellectual mood which with him always accompanied violent
physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he seemed to be
thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his family
kept coming back to his mind, and the impression of them seemed
to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some
question connected with them.
In the evening at tea, two landowners who had come about some
business connected with a wardship were of the party, and the
interesting conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang
up.
Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was
obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who
was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced,
fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin
tried through her to get a solution of the weighty enigma her
husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of
ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony
of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was
sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as he
fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of
a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in
spite of the bosom's being very white, or just because it was
very white, deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He
imagined, probably mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had
been made on his account, and felt that he had no right to look
at it, and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to
blame for the very fact of the low-necked bodice having been
made. It seemed to Levin that he had deceived someone, that he
ought to explain something, but that to explain it was
impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was
ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty
sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe
this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.
"You say," she said, pursuing the subject that had been started,
"that my husband cannot be interested in what's Russian. It's
quite the contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but
not as he is here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has
so much to do, and he has the faculty of interesting himself in
everything. Oh, you've not been to see our school, have you?"
"I've seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn't it?"
"Yes; that's Nastia's work," she said, indicating her sister.
"You teach in it yourself?" asked Levin, trying to look above the
open neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction
he should see it.
"Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we
have a first-rate schoolmistress now. And we've started
gymnastic exercises."
"No, thank you, I won't have any more tea," said Levin, and
conscious of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the
conversation, he got up, blushing. "I hear a very interesting
conversation," he added, and walked to the other end of the
table, where Sviazhsky was sitting with the two gentlemen of the
neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sitting sideways, with one elbow on
the table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand he
gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop again,
as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were
looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray
whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks.
The gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to
Levin that Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman's
complaints, which would at once demolish his whole contention,
but that in his position he could not give utterance to this
answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner's
comic speeches.
The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate
adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived
all his life in the country. Levin saw proofs of this in his
dress, in the old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his
everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic,
fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual
from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red,
sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring on the little finger.
Chapter 27
"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going...such a
lot of trouble wasted...I'd turn my back on the whole business,
sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch...to hear _La Belle
Helene_," said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his
shrewd old face.
"But you see you don't throw it up," said Nikolay Ivanovitch
Sviazhsky; "so there must be something gained."
"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought
nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn
sense. Though, instead of that, you'd never believe it--the
drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing
their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The
peasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a
laborer, he'll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring
you up before the justice of the peace."
"But then you make complaints to the justice too," said
Sviazhsky.
"I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a
talking, and such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret
it. At the works, for instance, they pocketed the advance-money
and made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them.
Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal court and
their village elder. He'll flog them in the good old style! But
for that there'd be nothing for it but to give it all up and run
away."
Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from
resenting it, was apparently amused by it.
"But you see we manage our land without such extreme measures,"
said he, smiling: "Levin and I and this gentleman."
He indicated the other landowner.
"Yes, the thing's done at Mihail Petrovitch's, but ask him how
it's done. Do you call that a rational system?" said the
landowner, obviously rather proud of the word "rational."
"My system's very simple," said Mihail Petrovitch, "thank God.
All my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn
taxes, and the peasants come to me, 'Father, master, help us!'
Well, the peasants are all one's neighbors; one feels for them.
So one advances them a third, but one says: 'Remember, lads, I
have helped you, and you must help me when I need it--whether
it's the sowing of the oats, or the haycutting, or the harvest';
and well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer--though there
are dishonest ones among them too, it's true."
Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,
exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail
Petrovitch, turning again to the gentleman with the gray
whiskers.
"Then what do you think?" he asked; "what system is one to adopt
nowadays?"
"Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the
crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do--only that's
just how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined.
Where the land with serf-labor and good management gave a yield
of nine to one, on the half-crop system it yields three to one.
Russia has been ruined by the emancipation!"
Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a
faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the
landowner's words absurd, he understood them better than he did
Sviazhsky. A great deal more of what the gentleman with the gray
whiskers said to show in what way Russia was ruined by the
emancipation struck him indeed as very true, new to him, and
quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably spoke his own
individual thought--a thing that very rarely happens--and a
thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding
some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up
out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in
the solitude of his village, and had considered in every aspect.
"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is only
made by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to show
he was not without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, of
Catherine, of Alexander. Take European history. And progress in
agriculture more than anything else--the potato, for instance,
that was introduced among us by force. The wooden plough too
wasn't always used. It was introduced maybe in the days before
the Empire, but it was probably brought in by force. Now, in our
own day, we landowners in the serf times used various
improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing
machines, and carting manure and all the modern implements--all
that we brought into use by our authority, and the peasants
opposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now, by the
abolition of serfdom we have been deprived of our authority; and
so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is
bound to sink to the most savage primitive condition. That's how
I see it."
"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up the
same system with hired labor," said Sviazhsky.
"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work the
system, allow me to ask?"
"There it is--the labor force--the chief element in
agriculture," thought Levin.
"With laborers."
"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with good
implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig,
and when he's drunk he ruins everything you give him. He makes
the horses ill with too much water, cuts good harness, barters
the tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the
thrashing machine, so as to break it. He loathes the sight of
anything that's not after his fashion. And that's how it is the
whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of
cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants,
and where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred
thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the same
thing had been done, but with care that..."
And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by
means of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.
This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin went
back to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying
to draw him into expressing his serious opinion:--
"That the standard of culture is falling, and that with our
present relations to the peasants there is no possibility of
farming on a rational system to yield a profit--that's perfectly
true," said he.
"I don't believe it," Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; "all I
see is that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that our
system of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high,
but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient
supervision; we don't even know how to keep accounts. Ask any
landowner; he won't be able to tell you what crop's profitable,
and what's not."
"Italian bookkeeping," said the gentleman of the gray whiskers
ironically. "You may keep your books as you like, but if they
spoil everything for you, there won't be any profit."
"Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine, or your
Russian presser, they will break, but my steam press they don't
break. A wretched Russian nag they'll ruin, but keep good
dray-horses--they won't ruin them. And so it is all round. We
must raise our farming to a higher level."
"Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay Ivanovitch!
It's all very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the
university, lads to be educated at the high school--how am I
going to buy these dray-horses?"
"Well, that's what the land banks are for."
"To get what's left me sold by auction? No, thank you."
"I don't agree that it's necessary or possible to raise the level
of agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself to
it, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I
don't know to whom they're any good. For my part, anyway,
whatever I've spent money on in the way of husbandry, it has been
a loss: stock--a loss, machinery--a loss."
"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed
in, positively laughing with satisfaction.
"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all the
neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a
rational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at
a loss. Come, tell us how does your land do--does it pay?" said
Levin, and at once in Sviazhsky's eyes he detected that fleeting
expression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to
penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind.
Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in good
faith. Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they had
that summer invited a German expert in bookkeeping from Moscow,
who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated
the management of their property, and found that it was costing
them a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember
the precise sum, but it appeared that the German had worked it
out to the fraction of a farthing.
The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits
of Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain his
neighbor and marshal was likely to be making.
"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky. "That merely
proves either that I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk my
capital for the increase of my rents."
"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be in
Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it,
but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put into
it--in other words they're working it out; so there's no
question of rent."
"How no rent? It's a law."
"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but
simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of
rent?..."
"Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or
raspberries." He turned to his wife. "Extraordinarily late the
raspberries are lasting this year."
And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked
off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the
very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just
beginning.
Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with
the gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the
difficulty arises from the fact that we don't find out the
peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like
all men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in
taking in any other person's idea, and particularly partial to
his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and
likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one
must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick,
and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden
replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers
and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed
on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.
"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the
question, "that it's impossible to find some relation to the
laborer in which the labor would become productive?"
"That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we've no
power over them," answered the landowner.
"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviazhsky. Having eaten
some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the
discussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have been
defined and studied," he said. "The relic of barbarism, the
primitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear of
itself; serfdom has been abolished--there remains nothing but
free labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made, and must be
adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers--you can't get
out of those forms."
"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."
"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all
probability."
"That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Why
shouldn't we seek them for ourselves?"
"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for
constructing railways. They are ready, invented."
"But if they don't do for us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.
And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of
Sviazhsky.
"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the
secret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse
me, do you know all that's been done in Europe on the question of
the organization of labor?"
"No, very little."
"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The
Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enormous
literature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle
movement...the Mulhausen experiment? That's a fact by now, as
you're probably aware."
"I have some idea of it, but very vague."
"No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as
I do. I'm not a professor of sociology, of course, but it
interested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to
study it."
"But what conclusion have they come to?"
"Excuse me..."
The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking
Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond
the outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.
Chapter 28
Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was
stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the
dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his
land was not an exceptional case, but the general condition of
things in Russia; that the organization of some relation of the
laborers to the soil in which they would work, as with the
peasant he had met half-way to the Sviazhskys', was not a dream,
but a problem which must be solved. And it seemed to him that
the problem could be solved, and that he ought to try and solve
it.
After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the
whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback
with them to see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Levin
went, before going to bed, into his host's study to get the books
on the labor question that Sviazhsky had offered him.
Sviazhsky's study was a huge room, surrounded by bookcases and
with two tables in it--one a massive writing table, standing in
the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered with
recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages,
ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp. On the writing
table was a stand of drawers marked with gold lettering, and full
of papers of various sorts.
Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.
"What are you looking at there?" he said to Levin, who was
standing at the round table looking through the reviews.
"Oh, yes, there's a very interesting article here," said
Sviazhsky of the review Levin was holding in his hand. "It
appears," he went on, with eager interest, "that Friedrich was
not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition
of Poland. It is proved..."
And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new,
very important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was
engrossed at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the
land, he wondered, as he heard Sviazhsky: "What is there inside
of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of
Poland?" When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help
asking: "Well, and what then?" But there was nothing to follow.
It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and
so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain
why it was interesting to him.
"Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,"
said Levin, sighing. "He's a clever fellow, and said a lot that
was true."
"Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at
heart, like all of them!" said Sviazhsky.
"Whose marshal you are."
"Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction," said
Sviazhsky, laughing.
"I'll tell you what interests me very much," said Levin. "He's
right that our system, that's to say of rational farming, doesn't
answer, that the only thing that answers is the money-lender
system, like that meek-looking gentleman's, or else the very
simplest.... Whose fault is it?"
"Our own, of course. Besides, it's not true that it doesn't
answer. It answers with Vassiltchikov."
"A factory..."
"But I really don't know what it is you are surprised at. The
people are at such a low stage of rational and moral development,
that it's obvious they're bound to oppose everything that's
strange to them. In Europe, a rational system answers because
the people are educated; it follows that we must educate the
people--that's all."
"But how are we to educate the people?"
"To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and
schools, and schools.
"But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of
material development: what help are schools for that?"
"Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to
the sick man--You should try purgative medicine. Taken: worse.
Try leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there's nothing
left but to pray to God. Tried it: worse. That's just how it is
with us. I say political economy; you say--worse. I say
socialism: worse. Education: worse."
"But how do schools help matters?"
"They give the peasant fresh wants."
"Well, that's a thing I've never understood," Levin replied with
heat. "In what way are schools going to help the people to
improve their material position? You say schools, education,
will give them fresh wants. So much the worse, since they won't
be capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of
addition and subtraction and the catechism is going to improve
their material condition, I never could make out. The day
before yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a
little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was
going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was
taking him to be doctored. I asked, 'Why, how does the wise
woman cure screaming fits?' 'She puts the child on the hen-roost
and repeats some charm....' "
"Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her
taking her child to the hen-roost to cure it of screaming fits is
just..." Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.
"Oh, no!" said Levin with annoyance; "that method of doctoring I
merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools.
The people are poor and ignorant--that we see as surely as the
peasant woman sees the baby is ill because it screams. But in
what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by
schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the
screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor."
"Well, in that, at least, you're in agreement with Spencer, whom
you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the
consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent
washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write..."
"Well, then, I'm very glad--or the contrary, very sorry, that
I'm in agreement with Spencer; only I've known it a long while.
Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic
organization in which the people will become richer, will have
more leisure--and then there will be schools."
"Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory."
"And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?" asked
Levin.
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky's eyes, and he said
smiling:
"No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really
hear it yourself?"
Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this
man's life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the
least what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the
process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of
reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only
thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to
something agreeable and amusing.
All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression
made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the
fundamental basis of all the conceptions and ideas of the day,
threw Levin into violent excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky,
keeping a stock of ideas simply for social purposes, and
obviously having some other principles hidden from Levin, while
with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by
ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman,
perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried
into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole
class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction
with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a
remedy for all this--all was blended in a sense of inward
turmoil, and anticipation of some solution near at hand.
Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress
that yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his
leg, Levin did not fall asleep for a long while. Not one
conversation with Sviazhsky, though he had said a great deal that
was clever, had interested Levin; but the conclusions of the
irascible landowner required consideration. Levin could not help
recalling every word he had said, and in imagination amending his
own replies.
"Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry
does not answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that
they must be forced on him by authority. If no system of
husbandry answered at all without these improvements, you would
be quite right. But the only system that does answer is where
laborer is working in accordance with his habits, just as on the
old peasant's land half-way here. Your and our general
dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to blame
or the laborers. We have gone our way--the European way--a
long while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our
labor force. Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an
abstract force, but as the _Russian peasant_ with his instincts,
and we shall arrange our system of culture in accordance with
that. Imagine, I ought to have said to him, that you have the
same system as the old peasant has, that you have found means of
making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work,
and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which
they will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get
twice or three times the yield you got before. Divide it in
halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus left you
will be greater, and the share of labor will be greater too. And
to do this one must lower the standard of husbandry and interest
the laborers in its success. How to do this?--that's a matter
of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done."
This idea threw Levin into a great excitement. He did not sleep
half the night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea
into practice. He had not intended to go away next day, but he
now determined to go home early in the morning. Besides, the
sister-in-law with her low-necked bodice aroused in him a feeling
akin to shame and remorse for some utterly base action. Most
important of all--he must get back without delay: he would have
to make haste to put his new project to the peasants before the
sowing of the winter wheat, so that the sowing might be
undertaken on a new basis. He had made up his mind to
revolutionize his whole system.
Chapter 29
The carrying out of Levin's plan presented many difficulties; but
he struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which,
though not what he desired, was enough to enable him, without
self-deception, to believe that the attempt was worth the
trouble. One of the chief difficulties was that the process of
cultivating the land was in full swing, that it was impossible to
stop everything and begin it all again from the beginning, and
the machine had to be mended while in motion.
When on the evening that he arrived home he informed the bailiff
of his plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with what
he said so long as he was pointing out that all that had been
done up to that time was stupid and useless. The bailiff said
that he had said so a long while ago, but no heed had been paid
him. But as for the proposal made by Levin--to take a part as
shareholder with his laborers in each agricultural undertaking--
at this the bailiff simply expressed a profound despondency, and
offered no definite opinion, but began immediately talking of the
urgent necessity of carrying the remaining sheaves of rye the
next day, and of sending the men out for the second ploughing, so
that Levin felt that this was not the time for discussing it.
On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making a
proposition to cede them the land on new terms, he came into
collision with the same great difficulty that they were so much
absorbed by the current work of the day, that they had not time
to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed
scheme.
The simple-hearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed completely to grasp
Levin's proposal--that he should with his family take a share of
the profits of the cattle-yard--and he was in complete sympathy
with the plan. But when Levin hinted at the future advantages,
Ivan's face expressed alarm and regret that he could not hear all
he had to say, and he made haste to find himself some task that
would admit of no delay: he either snatched up the fork to pitch
the hay out of the pens, or ran to get water or to clear out the
dung.
Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasant
that a landowner's object could be anything else than a desire to
squeeze all he could out of them. They were firmly convinced
that his real aim (whatever he might say to them) would always be
in what he did not say to them. And they themselves, in giving
their opinion, said a great deal but never said what was their
real object. Moreover (Levin felt that the irascible landowner
had been right) the peasants made their first and unalterable
condition of any agreement whatever that they should not be
forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use new
implements. They agreed that the modern plough ploughed better,
that the scarifier did the work more quickly, but they found
thousands of reasons that made it out of the question for them to
use either of them; and though he had accepted the conviction
that he would have to lower the standard of cultivation, he felt
sorry to give up improved methods, the advantages of which were
so obvious. But in spite of all these difficulties he got his
way, and by autumn the system was working, or at least so it
seemed to him.
At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the
land just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the
bailiff on new conditions of partnership; but he was very soon
convinced that this was impossible, and determined to divide it
up. The cattle-yard, the garden, hay fields, and arable land,
divided into several parts, had to be made into separate lots.
The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who, Levin fancied, understood
the matter better than any of them, collecting together a gang of
workers to help him, principally of his own family, became a
partner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the estate, a
tract of waste land that had lain fallow for eight years, was
with the help of the clever carpenter, Fyodor Ryezunov, taken by
six families of peasants on new conditions of partnership, and
the peasant Shuraev took the management of all the vegetable
gardens on the same terms. The remainder of the land was still
worked on the old system, but these three associated partnerships
were the first step to a new organization of the whole, and they
completely took up Levin's time.
It is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better than
before, and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows
and butter made of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less
food if kept cold, and that butter is more profitable made from
sour cream, and he asked for wages just as under the old system,
and took not the slightest interest in the fact that the money he
received was not wages but an advance out of his future share in
the profits.
It is true that Fyodor Ryezunov's company did not plough over the
ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying
themselves on the plea that the time was too short. It is true
that the peasants of the same company, though they had agreed to
work the land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not as
held in partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and more
than once the peasants and Ryezunov himself said to Levin, "If
you would take a rent for the land, it would save you trouble,
and we should be more free." Moreover the same peasants kept
putting off, on various excuses, the building of a cattleyard and
barn on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it till the
winter.
It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen
gardens he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He
evidently quite misunderstood, and apparently intentionally
misunderstood, the conditions upon which the land had been given
to him.
Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all
the advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard
nothing but the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved,
whatever he might say, not to let themselves be taken in. He
felt this especially when he talked to the cleverest of the
peasants, Ryezunov, and detected the gleam in Ryezunov's eyes
which showed so plainly both ironical amusement at Levin, and the
firm conviction that, if any one were to be taken in, it would
not be he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Levin thought the
system worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly and
insisting on his own way, he would prove to them in the future
the advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would go
of itself.
These matters, together with the management of the land still
left on his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so
engrossed Levin the whole summer that he scarcely ever went out
shooting. At the end of August he heard that the Oblonskys had
gone away to Moscow, from their servant who brought back the
side-saddle. He felt that in not answering Darya Alexandrovna's
letter he had by his rudeness, of which he could not think
without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he would
never go and see them again. He had been just as rude with the
Sviazhskys, leaving them without saying good-bye. But he would
never go to see them again either. He did not care about that
now. The business of reorganizing the farming of his land
absorbed him as completely as though there would never be
anything else in his life. He read the books lent him by
Sviazhsky, and copying out what he had not got, he read both the
economic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he had
anticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he had
undertaken. In the books on political economy--in Mill, for
instance, whom he studied first with great ardor, hoping every
minute to find an answer to the questions that were engrossing
him--he found laws deduced from the condition of land culture in
Europe; but he did not see why these laws, which did not apply in
Russia, must be general. He saw just the same thing in the
socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but
impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a
student, or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the
economic position in which Europe was placed, with which the
system of land tenure in Russia had nothing in common. Political
economy told him that the laws by which the wealth of Europe had
been developed, and was developing, were universal and unvarying.
Socialism told him that development along these lines leads to
ruin. And neither of them gave an answer, or even a hint, in
reply to the question what he, Levin, and all the Russian
peasants and landowners, were to do with their millions of hands
and millions of acres, to make them as productive as possible for
the common weal.
Having once taken the subject up, he read conscientiously
everything bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroad
to study land systems on the spot, in order that he might not on
this question be confronted with what so often met him on various
subjects. Often, just as he was beginning to understand the idea
in the mind of anyone he was talking to, and was beginning to
explain his own, he would suddenly be told: "But Kauffmann, but
Jones, but Dubois, but Michelli? You haven't read them: they've
thrashed that question out thoroughly."
He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing to
tell him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia has
splendid land, splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as
at the peasant's on the way to Sviazhsky's, the produce raised by
the laborers and the land is great--in the majority of cases
when capital is applied in the European way the produce is small,
and that this simply arises from the fact that the laborers want
to work and work well only in their own peculiar way, and that
this antagonism is not incidental but invariable, and has its
roots in the national spirit. He thought that the Russian people
whose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast tracts of
unoccupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land was
occupied, to the methods suitable to their purpose, and that
their methods were by no means so bad as was generally supposed.
And he wanted to prove this theoretically in his book and
practically on his land.
Chapter 30
At the end of September the timber had been carted for building
the cattleyard on the land that had been allotted to the
association of peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold
and the profits divided. In practice the system worked
capitally, or, at least, so it seemed to Levin. In order to work
out the whole subject theoretically and to complete his book,
which, in Levin's daydreams, was not merely to effect a
revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science
entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the
relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was
to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been
done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence
that all that had been done there was not what was wanted. Levin
was only waiting for the delivery of his wheat to receive the
money for it and go abroad. But the rains began, preventing the
harvesting of the corn and potatoes left in the fields, and
putting a stop to all work, even to the delivery of the wheat.
The mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried
away, and the weather got worse and worse.
On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and
hoping for fine weather, Levin began making final preparations
for his journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered,
sent the bailiff to the merchant to get the money owing him, and
went out himself to give some final directions on the estate
before setting off.
Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams
of water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and
his gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin
returned homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse
than ever towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so
cruelly that she went along sideways, shaking her head and ears;
but Levin was all right under his hood, and he looked cheerfully
about him at the muddy streams running under the wheels, at the
drops hanging on every bare twig, at the whiteness of the patch
of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the bridge, at the thick
layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay heaped up about the
stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of nature around
him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been having with
the peasants in the further village had shown that they were
beginning to get used to their new position. The old servant to
whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin's
plan, and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by
the purchase of cattle.
"I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall
attain my end," thought Levin; "and it's something to work and
take trouble for. This is not a matter of myself individually;
the question of the public welfare comes into it. The whole
system of culture, the chief element in the condition of the
people, must be completely transformed. Instead of poverty,
general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and
unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a
revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little
circle of our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole
world. Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it's an
aim worth working for. And its being me, Kostya Levin, who went
to a ball in a black tie, and was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya
girl, and who was intrinsically such a pitiful, worthless
creature--that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin felt just as
worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of
himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most
likely, had an Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets."
Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.
The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and
brought part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been
made with the old servant, and on the road the bailiff had
learned that everywhere the corn was still standing in the
fields, so that his one hundred and sixty shocks that had not
been carried were nothing in comparison with the losses of
others.
After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an
easy chair with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the
journey before him in connection with his book. Today all the
significance of his book rose before him with special
distinctness, and whole periods ranged themselves in his mind in
illustration of his theories. "I must write that down," he
thought. "That ought to form a brief introduction, which I
thought unnecessary before." He got up to go to his writing
table, and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and
looking at him as though to inquire where to go. But he had not
time to write it down, for the head peasants had come round, and
Levin went out into the hall to them.
After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the
labors of the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had
business with him, Levin went back to his study and sat down to
work.
Laska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in
her place with her stocking.
After writing for a little while, Levin suddenly thought with
exceptional vividness of Kitty, her refusal, and their last
meeting. He got up and began walking about the room.
"What's the use of being dreary?" said Agafea Mihalovna. "Come,
why do you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm
springs, especially now you're ready for the journey."
"Well, I am going away the day after tomorrow, Agafea Mihalovna;
I must finish my work."
"There, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn't done enough
for the peasants! Why, as 'tis, they're saying, 'Your master
will be getting some honor from the Tsar for it.' Indeed and it
is a strange thing; why need you worry about the peasants?"
"I'm not worrying about them; I'm doing it for my own good."
Agafea Mihalovna knew every detail of Levin's plans for his land.
Levin often put his views before her in all their complexity, and
not uncommonly he argued with her and did not agree with her
comments. But on this occasion she entirely misinterpreted what
he had said.
"Of one's soul's salvation we all know and must think before all
else," she said with a sigh. "Parfen Denisitch now, for all he
was no scholar, he died a death that God grant every one of us
the like," she said, referring to a servant who had died
recently. "Took the sacrament and all."
"That's not what I mean," said he. "I mean that I'm acting for
my own advantage. It's all the better for me if the peasants do
their work better."
"Well, whatever you do, if he's a lazy good-for-nought,
everything'll be at sixes and sevens. If he has a conscience,
he'll work, and if not, there's no doing anything."
"Oh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the
cattle better."
"All I say is," answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking
at random, but in strict sequence of idea, "that you ought to get
married, that's what I say."
Agafea Mihalovna's allusion to the very subject he had only just
been thinking about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and
without answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating
to himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance
of that work. Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to
the click of Agafea Mihalovna's needles, and recollecting what he
did not want to remember, he frowned again.
At nine o'clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a
carriage over the mud.
"Well, here's visitors come to us, and you won't be dull," said
Agafea Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin
overtook her. His work was not going well now, and he was glad
of a visitor, whoever it might be.
Chapter 31
Running halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he
knew, a familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly
through the sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was
mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure,
and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he
still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak
and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.
Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture.
Just now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that
had come to him, and Agafea Mihalovna's hint, was in a troubled
and uncertain humor, the meeting with his brother that he had to
face seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy
visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his
uncertain humor, he had to see his brother, who knew him through
and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his
heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was
not disposed to do.
Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the
hall; as soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of
selfish disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by
pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolay had been before in his
emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated,
still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.
He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the
scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he
saw that smile, submissive and humble, Levin felt something
clutching at his throat.
"You see, I've come to you," said Nikolay in a thick voice, never
for one second taking his eyes off his brother's face. "I've
been meaning to a long while, but I've been unwell all the time.
Now I'm ever so much better," he said, rubbing his beard with his
big thin hands.
"Yes, yes!" answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened
when, kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his
brother's skin and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a
strange light.
A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother
that through the sale of the small part of the property, that had
remained undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles
to come to him as his share.
Nikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what
was more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in
touch with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes
of old for the work that lay before him. In spite of his
exaggerated stoop, and the emaciation that was so striking from
his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever.
Levin led him into his study.
His brother dressed with particular care--a thing he never used
to do--combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went
upstairs.
He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as
Levin often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to
Sergey Ivanovitch without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna,
he made jokes with her and asked after the old servants. The
news of the death of Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression
on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he regained his
serenity immediately.
"Of course he was quite old," he said, and changed the subject.
"Well, I'll spend a month or two with you, and then I'm off to
Moscow. Do you know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and
I'm going into the service. Now I'm going to arrange my life
quite differently," he went on. "You know I got rid of that
woman."
"Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?"
"Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of
worries." But he did not say what the annoyances were. He could
not say that he had cast off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was
weak, and, above all, because she would look after him, as though
he were an invalid.
"Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I've
done silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money's
the last consideration; I don't regret it. So long as there's
health, and my health, thank God, is quite restored."
Levin listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing
to say. Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his
brother about his affairs; and Levin was glad to talk about
himself, because then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told
his brother of his plans and his doings.
His brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.
These two men were so akin, so near each other, that the
slightest gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could
be said in words.
Both of them now had only one thought--the illness of Nikolay
and the nearness of his death--which stifled all else. But
neither of them dared to speak of it, and so whatever they said--
not uttering the one thought that filled their minds--was all
falsehood. Never had Levin been so glad when the evening was
over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any outside
person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural and
false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this
unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even
more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved
brother, and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant
to live.
As the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated,
Levin put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a
screen.
His brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep,
tossed about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get
his throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his
breathing was painful, he said, "Oh, my God!" Sometimes when he
was choking he muttered angrily, "Ah, the devil!" Levin could
not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His thoughts were of
the most various, but the end of all his thoughts was the same--
death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time
presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death,
which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and
from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was
not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in
himself too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow, if not
tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn't it all the same! And what was
this inevitable death--he did not know, had never thought about
it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to
think about it.
"I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must
all end; I had forgotten--death."
He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his
knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he
pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it
became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality,
looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact--that death
will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning,
and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but
it was so.
"But I am alive still. Now what's to be done? what's to be
done?" he said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up
cautiously and went to the looking-glass, and began looking at
his face and hair. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples.
He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He
bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But
Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of lungs, had
had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how
they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only
waited till Fyodor Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling
pillows at each other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that
even their awe of Fyodor Bogdanitch could not check the
effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and happiness. "And now
that bent, hollow chest...and I, not knowing what will become of
me, or wherefore..."
"K...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why
don't you go to sleep?" his brother's voice called to him.
"Oh, I don't know, I'm not sleepy."
"I have had a good sleep, I'm not in a sweat now. Just see, feel
my shirt; it's not wet, is it?"
Levin felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle,
but for a long while he could not sleep. The question how to
live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a
new, insoluble question presented itself--death.
"Why, he's dying--yes, he'll die in the spring, and how help
him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I'd even
forgotten that it was at all."
Chapter 32
Levin had long before made the observation that when one is
uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable
and meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable
from their touchiness and irritability. He felt that this was
how it would be with his brother. And his brother Nikolay's
gentleness did in fact not last out for long. The very next
morning he began to be irritable, and seemed doing his best to
find fault with his brother, attacking him on his tenderest
points.
Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He
felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had
spoken, as it is called, from the heart--that is to say, had
said only just what they were thinking and feeling--they would
simply have looked into each other's faces, and Konstantin could
only have said, "You're dying, you're dying!" and Nikolay could
only have answered, "I know I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm
afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could have said nothing more, if
they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that
was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been
trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though,
as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do
it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say
what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a
ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was
exasperated at it.
The third day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to
him again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally
confounding it with communism.
"You've simply borrowed an idea that's not your own, but you've
distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it's not
applicable."
"But I tell you it's nothing to do with it. They deny the
justice of property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not
deny this chief stimulus." (Levin felt disgusted himself at
using such expressions, but ever since he had been engrossed by
his work, he had unconsciously come more and more frequently to
use words not Russian.) "All I want is to regulate labor."
"Which means, you've borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that
gave it its force, and want to make believe that it's something
new," said Nikolay, angrily tugging at his necktie.
"But my idea has nothing in common..."
"That, anyway," said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his
eyes flashing malignantly, "has the charm of--what's one to call
it?--geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It
may be a Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of
making of all the past a _tabula rasa_--no property, no family--
then labor would organize itself. But you gain nothing..."
"Why do you mix things up? I've never been a communist."
"But I have, and I consider it's premature, but rational, and
it has a future, just like Christianity in its first ages."
"All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be
investigated from the point of view of natural science; that is
to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained..."
"But that's utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form
of activity of itself, according to the stage of its development.
There have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we
have the half-crop system, rent, and day laborers. What are you
trying to find?"
Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the
bottom of his heart he was afraid that it was true--true that he
was trying to hold the balance even between communism and the
familiar forms, and that this was hardly possible.
"I am trying to find means of working productively for myself and
for the laborers. I want to organize..." he answered hotly.
"You don't want to organize anything; it's simply just as you've
been all your life, that you want to be original to pose as not
exploiting the peasants simply, but with some idea in view."
"Oh, all right, that's what you think--and let me alone!"
answered Levin, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching
uncontrollably.
"You've never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is
to please your vanity."
"Oh, very well; then let me alone!"
"And I will let you alone! and it's high time I did, and go to
the devil with you! and I'm very sorry I ever came!"
In spite of all Levin's efforts to soothe his brother afterwards,
Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was
better to part, and Konstantin saw that it simply was that life
was unbearable to him.
Nikolay was just getting ready to go, when Konstantin went in to
him again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if
he had hurt his feelings in any way.
"Ah, generosity!" said Nikolay, and he smiled. "If you want to
be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You're in the right;
but I'm going all the same."
It was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said,
looking with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother:
"Anyway, don't remember evil against me, Kostya!" and his voice
quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken
sincerely between them. Levin knew that those words meant, "You
see, and you know, that I'm in a bad way, and maybe we shall not
see each other again." Levin knew this, and the tears gushed
from his eyes. He kissed his brother once more, but he could not
speak, and knew not what to say.
Three days after his brother's departure, Levin too set off for
his foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Kitty's
cousin, in the railway train, Levin greatly astonished him by his
depression.
"What's the matter with you?" Shtcherbatsky asked him.
"Oh, nothing; there's not much happiness in life."
"Not much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen.
You shall see how to be happy."
"No, I've done with it all. It's time I was dead."
"Well, that's a good one!" said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; "why,
I'm only just getting ready to begin."
"Yes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall
soon be dead."
Levin said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw
nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything.
But his cherished scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had
to be got through somehow till death did come. Darkness had
fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness
he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work,
and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.
PART 4
Chapter 1
The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same
house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another.
Alexey Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day,
so that the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but
avoided dining at home. Vronsky was never at Alexey
Alexandrovitch's house, but Anna saw him away from home, and her
husband was aware of it.
The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them
would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day,
if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that
it was merely a temporary painful ordeal which would pass over.
Alexey Alexandrovitch hoped that this passion would pass, as
everything does pass, that everyone would forget about it, and
his name would remain unsullied. Anna, on whom the position
depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for anyone,
endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed,
that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She had
not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly
believed that something would very soon turn up now. Vronsky,
against his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that
something, apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all
difficulties.
In the middle of the winter Vronsky spent a very tiresome week.
A foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put
under his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing.
Vronsky was of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover,
the art of behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to
having to do with such grand personages--that was how he came to
be put in charge of the prince. But he felt his duties very
irksome. The prince was anxious to miss nothing of which he
would be asked at home, had he seen that in Russia? And on his
own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost all Russian
forms of amusement. Vronsky was obliged to be his guide in
satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent
driving to look at places of interest; the evenings they passed
enjoying the national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in
health exceptional even among princes. By gymnastics and careful
attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point
that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a
big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had traveled a great
deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of modern
facilities of communication was the accessibility of the
pleasures of all nations.
He had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had
made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In
Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in
a red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a
bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted
on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the
specially Russian forms of pleasure.
Vronsky, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to
him, was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements
suggested by various persons to the prince. They had race
horses, and Russian pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse
sledges, and gypsies and drinking feasts, with the Russian
accompaniment of broken crockery. And the prince with surprising
ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed trays full of
crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be
asking--what more, and does the whole Russian spirit consist in
just this?
In reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked
best French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal
champagne. Vronsky was used to princes, but, either because he
had himself changed of late, or that he was in too close
proximity to the prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome to
him. The whole of that week he experienced a sensation such as a
man might have set in charge of a dangerous madman, afraid of the
madman, and at the same time, from being with him, fearing for
his own reason. Vronsky was continually conscious of the
necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of stern
official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted.
The prince's manner of treating the very people who, to Vronsky's
surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with
Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian
women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Vronsky
crimson with indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so
particularly disagreeable to Vronsky was that he could not help
seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not
gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very
self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and
nothing else. He was a gentleman--that was true, and Vronsky
could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his
superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his
equals, and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors.
Vronsky was himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to
be so. But for this prince he was an inferior, and his
contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him revolted him.
"Brainless beef! can I be like that?" he thought.
Be that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the
prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he
was happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the
unpleasant reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the
station on their return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a
display of Russian prowess kept up all night.
Chapter 2
When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She
wrote, "I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go
on longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey
Alexandrovitch goes to the council at seven and will be there
till ten." Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her
bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband's
insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.
Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had
left the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having
some lunch, he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five
minutes memories of the hideous scenes he had witnessed during
the last few days were confused together and joined on to a
mental image of Anna and of the peasant who had played an
important part in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. He
waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to
light a candle. "What was it? What? What was the dreadful
thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a
disheveled beard was stooping down doing something, and all of a
sudden he began saying some strange words in French. Yes, there
was nothing else in the dream," he said to himself. "But why was
it so awful?" He vividly recalled the peasant again and those
incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and a
chill of horror ran down his spine.
"What nonsense!" thought Vronsky, and glanced at his watch.
It was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed
in haste, and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the
dream and only worried at being late. As he drove up to the
Karenins' entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten
minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grays
was standing at the entrance. He recognized Anna's carriage.
"She is coming to me," thought Vronsky, "and better she should.
I don't like going into that house. But no matter; I can't hide
myself," he thought, and with that manner peculiar to him from
childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky
got out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened, and
the hall porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage.
Vronsky, though he did not usually notice details, noticed at
this moment the amazed expression with which the porter glanced
at him. In the very doorway Vronsky almost ran up against Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The gas jet threw its full light on the
bloodless, sunken face under the black hat and on the white
cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Karenin's
fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Vronsky's face. Vronsky
bowed, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his
hand to his hat and went on. Vronsky saw him without looking
round get into the carriage, pick up the rug and the opera-glass
at the window and disappear. Vronsky went into the hall. His
brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and angry
light in them.
"What a position!" he thought. "If he would fight, would stand
up for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but
this weakness or baseness.... He puts me in the position of
playing false, which I never meant and never mean to do."
Vronsky's ideas had changed since the day of his conversation
with Anna in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the
weakness of Anna--who had surrendered herself up to him utterly,
and simply looked to him to decide her fate, ready to submit to
anything--he had long ceased to think that their tie might end
as he had thought then. His ambitious plans had retreated into
the background again, and feeling that he had got out of that
circle of activity in which everything was definite, he had given
himself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding him
more and more closely to her.
He was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her
retreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had
listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing room.
"No," she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her
voice the tears came into her eyes. "No; if things are to go on
like this, the end will come much, much too soon."
"What is it, dear one?"
"What? I've been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours...No,
I won't...I can't quarrel with you. Of course you couldn't
come. No, I won't." She laid her two hands on his shoulders,
and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and
at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to
make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time
she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination
(incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he
really was.
Chapter 3
"You met him?" she asked, when they had sat down at the table in
the lamplight. "You're punished, you see, for being late."
"Yes; but how was it? Wasn't he to be at the council?"
"He had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again.
But that's no matter. Don't talk about it. Where have you been?
With the prince still?"
She knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that
he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at
her thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he
had had to go to report on the prince's departure.
"But it's over now? He is gone?"
"Thank God it's over! You wouldn't believe how insufferable it's
been for me."
"Why so? Isn't it the life all of you, all young men, always
lead?" she said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet
work that was lying on the table, she began drawing the hook out
of it, without looking at Vronsky.
"I gave that life up long ago," said he, wondering at the change
in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. "And I confess,"
he said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, "this week
I've been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that
life, and I didn't like it."
She held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked
at him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.
"This morning Liza came to see me--they're not afraid to call on
me, in spite of the Countess Lidia Ivanovna," she put in--"and
she told me about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!"
"I was just going to say..."
She interrupted him. "It was that Therese you used to know?"
"I was just saying..."
"How disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can't understand
that a woman can never forget that," she said, getting more and
more angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation,
"especially a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know?
What have I ever known?" she said, "what you tell me. And how
do I know whether you tell me the truth?..."
"Anna, you hurt me. Don't you trust me? Haven't I told you that
I haven't a thought I wouldn't lay bare to you?"
"Yes, yes," she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous
thoughts. "But if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe
you, I believe you.... What were you saying?"
But he could not at once recall what he had been going to say.
These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more
frequent with her, horrified him, and however much he tried to
disguise the fact, made him feel cold to her, although he knew
the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How often he had
told himself that her love was happiness; and now she loved him
as a woman can love when love has outweighed for her all the good
things of life--and he was much further from happiness than when
he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself
unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best
happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what
she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically
she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over,
and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the actress
there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He
looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered,
with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked
and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his
love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have
torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at that moment
it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound
him to her could not be broken.
"Well, well, what was it you were going to say about the prince?
I have driven away the fiend," she added. The fiend was the
name they had given her jealousy. "What did you begin to tell me
about the prince? Why did you find it so tiresome?"
"Oh, it was intolerable!" he said, trying to pick up the thread
of his interrupted thought. "He does not improve on closer
acquaintance. If you want him defined, here he is: a prime,
well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and
nothing more," he said, with a tone of vexation that interested
her.
"No; how so?" she replied. "He's seen a great deal, anyway; he's
cultured?"
"It's an utterly different culture--their culture. He's
cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as
they despise everything but animal pleasures."
"But don't you all care for these animal pleasures?" she said,
and again he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.
"How is it you're defending him?" he said, smiling.
"I'm not defending him, it's nothing to me; but I imagine, if you
had not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got
out of them. But if it affords you satisfaction to gaze at
Therese in the attire of Eve..."
"Again, the devil again," Vronsky said, taking the hand she had
laid on the table and kissing it.
"Yes; but I can't help it. You don't know what I have suffered
waiting for you. I believe I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous: I
believe you when you're here; but when you're away somewhere
leading your life, so incomprehensible to me..."
She turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the
crochet work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began
working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in
the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously
in the embroidered cuff.
"How was it, then? Where did you meet Alexey Alexandrovitch?"
Her voice sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.
"We ran up against each other in the doorway."
"And he bowed to you like this?"
She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly
transformed her expression, folded her hands, and Vronsky
suddenly saw in her beautiful face the very expression with which
Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He smiled, while she
laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep laugh, which was one of her
greatest charms.
"I don't understand him in the least," said Vronsky. "If after
your avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you,
if he had called me out--but this I can't understand. How can he
put up with such a position? He feels it, that's evident."
"He?" she said sneeringly. "He's perfectly satisfied."
"What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so
happy?"
"Only not he. Don't I know him, the falsity in which he's
utterly steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is
living with me? He understands nothing, and feels nothing.
Could a man of any feeling live in the same house with his
unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her, call her 'my dear'?"
And again she could not help mimicking him: "'Anna, _ma chere_;
Anna, dear'!"
"He's not a man, not a human being--he's a doll! No one knows
him; but I know him. Oh, if I'd been in his place, I'd long ago
have killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn't
have said, 'Anna, ma chere'! He's not a man, he's an official
machine. He doesn't understand that I'm your wife, that he's
outside, that he's superfluous.... Don't let's talk of him!..."
"You're unfair, very unfair, dearest," said Vronsky, trying to
soothe her. "But never mind, don't let's talk of him. Tell me
what you've been doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong
with you, and what did the doctor say?"
She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit
on other absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband and was
awaiting the moment to give expression to them.
But he went on:
"I imagine that it's not illness, but your condition. When will
it be?"
The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile,
a consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet
melancholy, came over her face.
"Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we
must put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me,
what I would give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I
should not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy....
And it will come soon, but not as we expect."
And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable
to herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go
on. She laid her hand on his sleeve, dazzling and white with its
rings in the lamplight.
"It won't come as we suppose. I didn't mean to say this to you,
but you've made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall
all, all be at peace, and suffer no more."
"I don't understand," he said, understanding her.
"You asked when? Soon. And I shan't live through it. Don't
interrupt me!" and she made haste to speak. "I know it; I know
for certain. I shall die; and I'm very glad I shall die, and
release myself and you."
Tears dropped from her eyes; he bent down over her hand and began
kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no
sort of grounds, though he could not control it.
"Yes, it's better so," she said, tightly gripping his hand.
"That's the only way, the only way left us."
He had recovered himself, and lifted his head.
"How absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!"
"No, it's the truth."
"What, what's the truth?"
"That I shall die. I have had a dream."
"A dream?" repeated Vronsky, and instantly he recalled the
peasant of his dream.
"Yes, a dream," she said. "It's a long while since I dreamed it.
I dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something
there, to find out something; you know how it is in dreams," she
said, her eyes wide with horror; "and in the bedroom, in the
corner, stood something."
"Oh, what nonsense! How can you believe..."
But she would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was
too important to her.
"And the something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with
a disheveled beard, little, and dreadful looking. I wanted to
run away, but he bent down over a sack, and was fumbling there
with his hands..."
She showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her
face. And Vronsky, remembering his dream, felt the same terror
filling his soul.
"He was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, you
know: _Il faut le battre, le fer, le brayer, le petrir_.... And in
my horror I tried to wake up, and woke up...but woke up in
the dream. And I began asking myself what it meant. And Korney
said to me: 'In childbirth you'll die, ma'am, you'll die....'
And I woke up."
"What nonsense, what nonsense!" said Vronsky; but he felt himself
that there was no conviction in his voice.
"But don't let's talk of it. Ring the bell, I'll have tea. And
stay a little now; it's not long I shall..."
But all at once she stopped. The expression of her face
instantaneously changed. Horror and excitement were suddenly
replaced by a look of soft, solemn, blissful attention. He could
not comprehend the meaning of the change. She was listening to
the stirring of the new life within her.
Chapter 4
Alexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps,
drove, as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat
through two acts there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see.
On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and
noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went,
as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his usual habit, he
did not go to bed, he walked up and down his study till three
o'clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger with his
wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one
stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her
own home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his
request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his
threat--obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the
difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would
do it, and now he must carry out his threat. Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had hinted that this was the best way out of his
position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had been brought
to such perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility
of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come
singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the native
tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky
province, had brought such official worries upon Alexey
Alexandrovitch that he had been of late in a continual condition
of extreme irritability.
He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort
of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in
the morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup
full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose
with his wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his
wife, he went into her room directly he heard she was up.
Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at
his appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering,
and his eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his
mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his
gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and
firmness such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into
her room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her
writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.
"What do you want?" she cried.
"Your lover's letters," he said.
"They're not here," she said, shutting the drawer; but from that
action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her
hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used
to put her most important papers. She tried to pull the
portfolio away, but he pushed her back.
"Sit down! I have to speak to you," he said, putting the
portfolio under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his
elbow that his shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she
gazed at him in silence.
"I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in
this house."
"I had to see him to..."
She stopped, not finding a reason.
"I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her
lover."
"I meant, I only..." she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness
of his angered her, and gave her courage. "Surely you must feel
how easy it is for you to insult me?" she said.
"An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a
thief he's a thief is simply _la constatation d'un fait_."
"This cruelty is something new I did not know in you."
"You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty,
giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the
condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?"
"It's worse than cruel--it's base, if you want to know!" Anna
cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.
"No!" he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note
higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the
arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he
was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.
"Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake
husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband's
bread!"
She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the
evening before to her lover, that _he_ was her husband, and her
husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt
all the justice of his words, and only said softly:
"You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be
myself; but what are you saying all this for?"
"What am I saying it for? what for?" he went on, as angrily.
"That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes
in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to
put an end to this state of things."
"Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway," she said; and again, at
the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came
into her eyes.
"It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you
must have the satisfaction of animal passion..."
"Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won't say it's not generous, but it's
not like a gentleman to strike anyone who's down."
"Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man
who was your husband have no interest for you. You don't care
that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff...thuff..."
Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered,
and was utterly unable to articulate the word "suffering." In
the end he pronounced it "thuffering." She wanted to laugh, and
was immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a
moment. And for the first time, for an instant, she felt for
him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what
could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too
was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid,
less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no
special significance.
"I came to tell you..." he said.
She glanced at him. "No, it was my fancy," she thought,
recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the
word "suffering." "No; can a man with those dull eyes, with that
self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?"
"I cannot change anything," she whispered.
"I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and
shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice
of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall
intrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my
sister's," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling
what he had meant to say about his son.
"You take Seryozha to hurt me," she said, looking at him from
under her brows. "You do not love him.... Leave me Seryozha!"
"Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is
associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I
shall take him. Goodbye!"
And he was going away, but now she detained him.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!" she whispered once
more. "I have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha till my...I
shall soon be confined; leave him!"
Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand
from her, he went out of the room without a word.
Chapter 5
The waiting-room of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full
when Alexey Alexandrovitch entered it. Three ladies--an old
lady, a young lady, and a merchant's wife--and three gentlemen--
one a German banker with a ring on his finger, the second a
merchant with a beard, and the third a wrathful-looking
government clerk in official uniform, with a cross on his neck--
had obviously been waiting a long while already. Two clerks were
writing at tables with scratching pens. The appurtenances of the
writing-tables, about which Alexey Alexandrovitch was himself
very fastidious, were exceptionally good. He could not help
observing this. One of the clerks, without getting up, turned
wrathfully to Alexey Alexandrovitch, half closing his eyes.
"What are you wanting?"
He replied that he had to see the lawyer on some business.
"He is engaged," the clerk responded severely, and he pointed
with his pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing.
"Can't he spare time to see me?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
"He has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your
turn."
"Then I must trouble you to give him my card," Alexey
Alexandrovitch said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of
preserving his incognito.
The clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he
read on it, went to the door.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was in principle in favor of the publicity
of legal proceedings, though for some higher official
considerations he disliked the application of the principle in
Russia, and disapproved of it, as far as he could disapprove of
anything instituted by authority of the Emperor. His whole life
had been spent in administrative work, and consequently, when he
did not approve of anything, his disapproval was softened by the
recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and the possibility
of reform in every department. In the new public law courts he
disliked the restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting cases.
But till then he had had nothing to do with the law courts, and
so had disapproved of their publicity simply in theory; now his
disapprobation was strengthened by the unpleasant impression made
on him in the lawyer's waiting room.
"Coming immediately," said the clerk; and two minutes later there
did actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old
solicitor who had been consulting with the lawyer himself.
The lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish
beard, light-colored long eyebrows, and an overhanging brow. He
was attired as though for a wedding, from his cravat to his
double watch-chain and varnished boots. His face was clever and
manly, but his dress was dandified and in bad taste.
"Pray walk in," said the lawyer, addressing Alexey
Alexandrovitch; and, gloomily ushering Karenin in before him, he
closed the door.
"Won't you sit down?" He indicated an armchair at a writing table
covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his
little hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent
his head on one side. But as soon as he was settled in this
position a moth flew over the table. The lawyer, with a
swiftness that could never have been expected of him, opened his
hands, caught the moth, and resumed his former attitude.
"Before beginning to speak of my business," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, following the lawyer's movements with wondering
eyes, "I ought to observe that the business about which I have to
speak to you is to be strictly private."
The lawyer's overhanging reddish mustaches were parted in a
scarcely perceptible smile.
"I should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets
confided to me. But if you would like proof..."
Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at his face, and saw that the
shrewd, gray eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it
already.
"You know my name?" Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed.
"I know you and the good"--again he caught a moth--"work you are
doing, like every Russian," said the lawyer, bowing.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But
having once made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice,
without timidity--or hesitation, accentuating here and there a
word.
"I have the misfortune," Alexey Alexandrovitch began, "to have
been deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all
relations with my wife by legal means--that is, to be divorced,
but to do this so that my son may not remain with his mother."
The lawyer's gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing
with irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it
was not simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable
job: there was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the
malignant gleam he saw in his wife's eyes.
"You desire my assistance in securing a divorce?"
"Yes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be
wasting your time and attention. I have come simply to consult
you as a preliminary step. I want a divorce, but the form in
which it is possible is of great consequence to me. It is very
possible that if that form does not correspond with my
requirements I may give up a legal divorce."
"Oh, that's always the case," said the lawyer, "and that's always
for you to decide."
He let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch's feet, feeling
that he might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible
amusement. He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and
moved his hands, but did not catch it from regard for Alexey
Alexandrovitch's position.
"Though in their general features our laws on this subject are
known to me," pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, "I should be glad
to have an idea of the forms in which such things are done in
practice."
"You would be glad," the lawyer, without lifting his eyes,
responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his
client's remarks, "for me to lay before you all the methods by
which you could secure what you desire?"
And on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he
went on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexey
Alexandrovitch's face, which was growing red in patches.
"Divorce by our laws," he said, with a slight shade of
disapprobation of our laws, "is possible, as you are aware, in
the following cases.... Wait a little!" he called to a clerk
who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the same, said
a few words to him, and sat down again. "...In the following
cases: physical defect in the married parties, desertion without
communication for five years," he said, crooking a short finger
covered with hair, "adultery" (this word he pronounced with
obvious satisfaction), "subdivided as follows" (he continued to
crook his fat fingers, though the three cases and their
subdivisions could obviously not be classified together):
"physical defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the
husband or of the wife." As by now all his fingers were used up,
he uncrooked all his fingers and went on: "This is the
theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honor to
apply to me in order to learn its application in practice. And
therefore, guided by precedents, I must inform you that in
practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to the following--
there's no physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion?..."
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent.
"--May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the
married parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty
party by mutual agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental
detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely
met with in practice," said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at
Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a man selling pistols, after
enlarging on the advantages of each weapon, might await his
customer's choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said nothing, and
therefore the lawyer went on: "The most usual and simple, the
sensible course, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I
should not permit myself to express it so, speaking with a man of
no education," he said, "but I imagine that to you this is
comprehensible."
Alexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not
immediately comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual
consent, and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer
promptly came to his assistance.
"People cannot go on living together--here you have a fact. And
if both are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a
matter of no importance. And at the same time this is the
simplest and most certain method."
Alexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious
scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan.
"That is out of the question in the present case," he said.
"Only one alternative is possible: undesigned detection,
supported by letters which I have."
At the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave
utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.
"Kindly consider," he began, "cases of that kind are, as you are
aware, under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers
are fond of going into the minutest details in cases of that
kind," he said with a smile, which betrayed his sympathy with the
reverend fathers' taste. "Letters may, of course, be a partial
confirmation; but detection in the fact there must be of the most
direct kind, that is, by eyewitnesses. In fact, if you do me the
honor to intrust your confidence to me, you will do well to leave
me the choice of the measures to be employed. If one wants the
result, one must admit the means."
"If it is so..." Alexey Alexandrovitch began, suddenly turning
white; but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the
door to speak to the intruding clerk.
"Tell her we don't haggle over fees!" he said, and returned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch.
On his way back he caught unobserved another moth. "Nice state
my rep curtains will be in by the summer!" he thought, frowning.
"And so you were saying?..." he said.
"I will communicate my decision to you by letter," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After
standing a moment in silence, he said: "From your words I may
consequently conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would
ask you to let me know what are your terms."
"It may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action,"
said the lawyer, not answering his question. "When can I reckon
on receiving information from you?" he asked, moving towards the
door, his eyes and his varnished boots shining.
"In a week's time. Your answer as to whether you will undertake
to conduct the case, and on what terms, you will be so good as to
communicate to me."
"Very good."
The lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door,
and, left alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He
felt so mirthful that, contrary to his rules, he made a reduction
in his terms to the haggling lady, and gave up catching moths,
finally deciding that next winter he must have the furniture
covered with velvet, like Sigonin's.
Chapter 6
Alexey Alexandrovitch had gained a brilliant victory at the
sitting of the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the
sequel this victory cut the ground from under his feet. The new
commission for the inquiry into the condition of the native
tribes in all its branches had been formed and despatched to its
destination with an unusual speed and energy inspired by Alexey
Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report was presented. The
condition of the native tribes was investigated in its political,
administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and religious
aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably
stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were
not a product of human thought, always liable to error, but were
all the product of official activity. The answers were all based
on official data furnished by governors and heads of churches,
and founded on the reports of district magistrates and
ecclesiastical superintendents, founded in their turn on the
reports of parochial overseers and parish priests; and so all of
these answers were unhesitating and certain. All such questions
as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of the
adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs, etc.--
questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the
official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages--
received full, unhesitating solution. And this solution was in
favor of Alexey Alexandrovitch's contention. But Stremov, who
had felt stung to the quick at the last sitting, had, on the
reception of the commission's report, resorted to tactics which
Alexey Alexandrovitch had not anticipated. Stremov, carrying
with him several members, went over to Alexey Alexandrovitch's
side, and not contenting himself with warmly defending the
measure proposed by Karenin, proposed other more extreme measures
in the same direction. These measures, still further exaggerated
in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch's fundamental
idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of
Stremov's tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the
measures seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest
authorities, and public opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the
newspapers, all at the same time fell foul of them, expressing
their indignation both with the measures and their nominal
father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremov drew back, affecting to
have blindly followed Karenin, and to be astounded and distressed
at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey
Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his
domestic griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the
commission. Some members, with Stremov at their head, justified
their mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the
commission of revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and
maintained that the report of the commission was rubbish, and
simply so much waste paper. Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a
following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an
attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the
statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence
of this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was
chaos, and although everyone was interested, no one could tell
whether the native tribes really were becoming impoverished and
ruined, or whether they were in a flourishing condition. The
position of Alexey Alexandrovitch, owing to this, and partly
owing to the contempt lavished on him for his wife's infidelity,
became very precarious. And in this position he took an
important resolution. To the astonishment of the commission, he
announced that he should ask permission to go himself to
investigate the question on the spot. And having obtained
permission, Alexey Alexandrovitch prepared to set off to these
remote provinces.
Alexey Alexandrovitch's departure made a great sensation, the
more so as just before he started he officially returned the
posting-fares allowed him for twelve horses, to drive to his
destination.
"I think it very noble," Betsy said about this to the Princess
Myakaya. "Why take money for posting-horses when everyone knows
that there are railways everywhere now?"
But Princess Myakaya did not agree, and the Princess Tverskaya's
opinion annoyed her indeed.
"It's all very well for you to talk," said she, "when you have I
don't know how many millions; but I am very glad when my husband
goes on a revising tour in the summer. It's very good for him
and pleasant traveling about, and it's a settled arrangement for
me to keep a carriage and coachman on the money."
On his way to the remote provinces Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped
for three days at Moscow.
The day after his arrival he was driving back from calling on the
governor-general. At the crossroads by Gazetoy Place, where
there are always crowds of carriages and sledges, Alexey
Alexandrovitch suddenly heard his name called out in such a loud
and cheerful voice that he could not help looking round. At the
corner of the pavement, in a short, stylish overcoat and a
low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with a smile that
showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Stepan
Arkadyevitch, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him
vigorously and urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had
one arm on the window of a carriage that was stopping at the
corner, and out of the window were thrust the heads of a lady in
a velvet hat, and two children. Stepan Arkadyevitch was smiling
and beckoning to his brother-in-law. The lady smiled a kindly
smile too, and she too waved her hand to Alexey Alexandrovitch.
It was Dolly with her children.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to see anyone in Moscow, and
least of all his wife's brother. He raised his hat and would
have driven on, but Stepan Arkadyevitch told his coachman to
stop, and ran across the snow to him.
"Well, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I
was at Dussot's yesterday and saw 'Karenin' on the visitors'
list, but it never entered my head that it was you," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, sticking his head in at the window of the carriage,
"or I should have looked you up. I am glad to see you!" he
said, knocking one foot against the other to shake the snow off.
"What a shame of you not to let us know!" he repeated.
"I had no time; I am very busy," Alexey Alexandrovitch responded
dryly.
"Come to my wife, she does so want to see you."
Alexey Alexandrovitch unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet
were wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over
the snow to Darya Alexandrovna.
"Why, Alexey Alexandrovitch, what are you cutting us like this
for?" said Dolly, smiling.
"I was very busy. Delighted to see you!" he said in a tone
clearly indicating that he was annoyed by it. "How are you?"
"Tell me, how is my darling Anna?"
Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled something and would have gone on.
But Stepan Arkadyevitch stopped him.
"I tell you what we'll do tomorrow. Dolly, ask him to dinner.
We'll ask Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our
Moscow celebrities."
"Yes, please, do come," said Dolly; "we will expect you at five,
or six o'clock, if you like. How is my darling Anna? How
long..."
"She is quite well," Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled, frowning.
"Delighted!" and he moved away towards his carriage.
"You will come?" Dolly called after him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch said something which Dolly could not catch
in the noise of the moving carriages.
"I shall come round tomorrow!" Stepan Arkadyevitch shouted to
him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch got into his carriage, and buried himself
in it so as neither to see nor be seen.
"Queer fish!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch to his wife, and glancing
at his watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face,
indicating a caress to his wife and children, and walked jauntily
along the pavement.
"Stiva! Stiva!" Dolly called, reddening.
He turned round.
"I must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tanya. Give me the
money."
"Never mind; you tell them I'll pay the bill!" and he vanished,
nodding genially to an acquaintance who drove by.
Chapter 7
The next day was Sunday. Stepan Arkadyevitch went to the Grand
Theater to a rehearsal of the ballet, and gave Masha Tchibisova,
a pretty dancing-girl whom he had just taken under his
protection, the coral necklace he had promised her the evening
before, and behind the scenes in the dim daylight of the theater,
managed to kiss her pretty little face, radiant over her present.
Besides the gift of the necklace he wanted to arrange with her
about meeting after the ballet. After explaining that he could
not come at the beginning of the ballet, he promised he would
come for the last act and take her to supper. From the theater
Stepan Arkadyevitch drove to Ohotny Row, selected himself the
fish and asparagus for dinner, and by twelve o'clock was at
Dussot's, where he had to see three people, luckily all staying
at the same hotel: Levin, who had recently come back from abroad
and was staying there; the new head of his department, who had
just been promoted to that position, and had come on a tour of
revision to Moscow; and his brother-in-law, Karenin, whom he must
see, so as to be sure of bringing him to dinner.
Stepan Arkadyevitch liked dining, but still better he liked to
give a dinner, small, but very choice, both as regards the food
and drink and as regards the selection of guests. He
particularly liked the program of that day's dinner. There would
be fresh perch, asparagus, and _la piece de resistance_--
first-rate, but quite plain, roast beef, and wines to suit: so
much for the eating and drinking. Kitty and Levin would be of
the party, and that this might not be obtrusively evident, there
would be a girl cousin too, and young Shtcherbatsky, and _la piece
de resistance_ among the guests--Sergey Koznishev and Alexey
Alexandrovitch. Sergey Ivanovitch was a Moscow man, and a
philosopher; Alexey Alexandrovitch a Petersburger, and a
practical politician. He was asking, too, the well-known
eccentric enthusiast, Pestsov, a liberal, a great talker, a
musician, an historian, and the most delightfully youthful person
of fifty, who would be a sauce or garnish for Koznishev and
Karenin. He would provoke them and set them off.
The second installment for the forest had been received from the
merchant and was not yet exhausted; Dolly had been very amiable
and goodhumored of late, and the idea of the dinner pleased
Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of view. He was in the most
light-hearted mood. There were two circumstances a little
unpleasant, but these two circumstances were drowned in the sea
of good-humored gaiety which flooded the soul of Stepan
Arkadyevitch. These two circumstances were: first, that on
meeting Alexey Alexandrovitch the day before in the street he had
noticed that he was cold and reserved with him, and putting the
expression of Alexey Alexandrovitch's face and the fact that he
had not come to see them or let them know of his arrival with the
rumors he had heard about Anna and Vronsky, Stepan Arkadyevitch
guessed that something was wrong between the husband and wife.
That was one disagreeable thing. The other slightly disagreeable
fact was that the new head of his department, like all new heads,
had the reputation already of a terrible person, who got up at
six o'clock in the morning, worked like a horse, and insisted on
his subordinates working in the same way. Moreover, this new
head had the further reputation of being a bear in his manners,
and was, according to all reports, a man of a class in all
respects the opposite of that to which his predecessor had
belonged, and to which Stepan Arkadyevitch had hitherto belonged
himself. On the previous day Stepan Arkadyevitch had appeared at
the office in a uniform, and the new chief had been very affable
and had talked to him as to an acquaintance. Consequently Stepan
Arkadyevitch deemed it his duty to call upon him in his
non-official dress. The thought that the new chief might not
tender him a warm reception was the other unpleasant thing. But
Stepan Arkadyevitch instinctively felt that everything would _come
round_ all right. "They're all people, all men, like us poor
sinners; why be nasty and quarrelsome?" he thought as he went
into the hotel.
"Good-day, Vassily," he said, walking into the corridor with his
hat cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; "why,
you've let your whiskers grow! Levin, number seven, eh? Take me
up, please. And find out whether Count Anitchkin" (this was the
new head) "is receiving."
"Yes, sir," Vassily responded, smiling. "You've not been to see
us for a long while."
"I was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this
number seven?"
Levin was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the
room, measuring a fresh bearskin, when Stepan Arkadyevitch went
in.
"What! you killed him?" cried Stepan Arkadyevitch. "Well done!
A she-bear? How are you, Arhip!"
He shook hands with the peasant and sat down on the edge of a
chair, without taking off his coat and hat.
"Come, take off your coat and stay a little," said Levin, taking
his hat.
"No, I haven't time; I've only looked in for a tiny second,"
answered Stepan Arkadyevitch. He threw open his coat, but
afterwards did take it off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking
to Levin about hunting and the most intimate subjects.
"Come, tell me, please, what you did abroad? Where have you
been?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, when the peasant had gone.
"Oh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England--
not in the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns, and saw a
great deal that was new to me. And I'm glad I went."
"Yes, I knew your idea of the solution of the labor question."
"Not a bit: in Russia there can be no labor question. In Russia
the question is that of the relation of the working people to the
land; though the question exists there too--but there it's a
matter of repairing what's been ruined, while with us..."
Stepan Arkadyevitch listened attentively to Levin.
"Yes, yes!" he said, "it's very possible you're right. But I'm
glad you're in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working,
and interested. Shtcherbatsky told me another story--he met
you--that you were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing
but death...."
"Well, what of it? I've not given up thinking of death," said
Levin. "It's true that it's high time I was dead; and that all
this is nonsense. It's the truth I'm telling you. I do value
my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this:
all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which
has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have
something great--ideas, work--it's all dust and ashes."
"But all that's as old as the hills, my boy!"
"It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then
somehow everything becomes of no consequence. When you
understand that you will die tomorrow, if not today, and nothing
will be left, then everything is so unimportant! And I consider
my idea very important, but it turns out really to be as
unimportant too, even if it were carried out, as doing for that
bear. So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with
work--anything so as not to think of death!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled a subtle affectionate smile as he
listened to Levin.
"Well, of course! Here you've come round to my point. Do you
remember you attacked me for seeking enjoyment in life? Don't be
so severe, O moralist!"
"No; all the same, what's fine in life is..." Levin hesitated--
"oh, I don't know. All I know is that we shall soon be dead."
"Why so soon?"
"And do you know, there's less charm in life, when one thinks of
death, but there's more peace."
"On the contrary, the finish is always the best. But I must be
going," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting up for the tenth time.
"Oh, no, stay a bit!" said Levin, keeping him. "Now, when shall
we see each other again? I'm going tomorrow."
"I'm a nice person! Why, that's just what I came for! You simply
must come to dinner with us today. Your brother's coming, and
Karenin, my brother-in-law."
"You don't mean to say he's here?" said Levin, and he wanted to
inquire about Kitty. He had heard at the beginning of the winter
that she was at Petersburg with her sister, the wife of the
diplomat, and he did not know whether she had come back or not;
but he changed his mind and did not ask. "Whether she's coming
or not, I don't care," he said to himself.
"So you'll come?"
"Of course."
"At five o'clock, then, and not evening dress."
And Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and went down below to the new
head of his department. Instinct had not misled Stepan
Arkadyevitch. The terrible new head turned out to be an
extremely amenable person, and Stepan Arkadyevitch lunched with
him and stayed on, so that it was four o'clock before he got to
Alexey Alexandrovitch.
Chapter 8
Alexey Alexandrovitch, on coming back from church service, had
spent the whole morning indoors. He had two pieces of business
before him that morning; first, to receive and send on a
deputation from the native tribes which was on its way to
Petersburg, and now at Moscow; secondly, to write the promised
letter to the lawyer. The deputation, though it had been
summoned at Alexey Alexandrovitch's instigation, was not without
its discomforting and even dangerous aspect, and he was glad he
had found it in Moscow. The members of this deputation had not
the slightest conception of their duty and the part they were to
play. They naively believed that it was their business to lay
before the commission their needs and the actual condition of
things, and to ask assistance of the government, and utterly
failed to grasp that some of their statements and requests
supported the contention of the enemy's side, and so spoiled the
whole business. Alexey Alexandrovitch was busily engaged with
them for a long while, drew up a program for them from which they
were not to depart, and on dismissing them wrote a letter to
Petersburg for the guidance of the deputation. He had his chief
support in this affair in the Countess Lidia Ivanovna. She was a
specialist in the matter of deputations, and no one knew better
than she how to manage them, and put them in the way they should
go. Having completed this task, Alexey Alexandrovitch wrote the
letter to the lawyer. Without the slightest hesitation he gave
him permission to act as he might judge best. In the letter he
enclosed three of Vronsky's notes to Anna, which were in the
portfolio he had taken away.
Since Alexey Alexandrovitch had left home with the intention of
not returning to his family again, and since he had been at the
lawyer's and had spoken, though only to one man, of his
intention, since especially he had translated the matter from the
world of real life to the world of ink and paper, he had grown
more and more used to his own intention, and by now distinctly
perceived the feasibility of its execution.
He was sealing the envelope to the lawyer, when he heard the loud
tones of Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice. Stepan Arkadyevitch was
disputing with Alexey Alexandrovitch's servant, and insisting on
being announced.
"No matter," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, "so much the better.
I will inform him at once of my position in regard to his
sister, and explain why it is I can't dine with him."
"Come in!" he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them
in the blotting-paper.
"There, you see, you're talking nonsense, and he's at home!"
responded Stepan Arkadyevitch's voice, addressing the servant,
who had refused to let him in, and taking off his coat as he
went, Oblonsky walked into the room. "Well, I'm awfully glad
I've found you! So I hope..." Stepan Arkadyevitch began
cheerfully.
"I cannot come," Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, standing and
not asking his visitor to sit down.
Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought to pass at once into those
frigid relations in which he ought to stand with the brother of a
wife against whom he was beginning a suit for divorce. But he
had not taken into account the ocean of kindliness brimming over
in the heart of Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Stepan Arkadyevitch opened wide his clear, shining eyes.
"Why can't you? What do you mean?" he asked in perplexity,
speaking in French. "Oh, but it's a promise. And we're all
counting on you."
"I want to tell you that I can't dine at your house, because the
terms of relationship which have existed between us must cease."
"How? How do you mean? What for?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
a smile.
"Because I am beginning an action for divorce against your
sister, my wife. I ought to have..."
But, before Alexey Alexandrovitch had time to finish his
sentence, Stepan Arkadyevitch was behaving not at all as he had
expected. He groaned and sank into an armchair.
"No, Alexey Alexandrovitch! What are you saying?" cried
Oblonsky, and his suffering was apparent in his face.
"It is so."
"Excuse me, I can't, I can't believe it!"
Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, feeling that his words had not
had the effect he anticipated, and that it would be unavoidable
for him to explain his position, and that, whatever explanations
he might make, his relations with his brother-in-law would remain
unchanged.
"Yes, I am brought to the painful necessity of seeking a
divorce," he said.
"I will say one thing, Alexey Alexandrovitch. I know you for an
excellent, upright man; I know Anna--excuse me, I can't change my
opinion of her--for a good, an excellent woman; and so, excuse
me, I cannot believe it. There is some misunderstanding," said
he.
"Oh, if it were merely a misunderstanding!..."
"Pardon, I understand," interposed Stepan Arkadyevitch. "But of
course.... One thing: you must not act in haste. You must not,
you must not act in haste!"
"I am not acting in haste," Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly,
"but one cannot ask advice of anyone in such a matter. I have
quite made up my mind."
"This is awful!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I would do one
thing, Alexey Alexandrovitch. I beseech you, do it!" he said.
"No action has yet been taken, if I understand rightly. Before
you take advice, see my wife, talk to her. She loves Anna like a
sister, she loves you, and she's a wonderful woman. For God's
sake, talk to her! Do me that favor, I beseech you!"
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and Stepan Arkadyevitch looked at
him sympathetically, without interrupting his silence.
"You will go to see her?"
"I don't know. That was just why I have not been to see you. I
imagine our relations must change."
"Why so? I don't see that. Allow me to believe that apart from
our connection you have for me, at least in part, the same
friendly feeling I have always had for you...and sincere esteem,"
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, pressing his hand. "Even if your worst
suppositions were correct, I don't--and never would--take on
myself to judge either side, and I see no reason why our
relations should be affected. But now, do this, come and see my
wife."
"Well, we look at the matter differently," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch coldly. "However, we won't discuss it."
"No; why shouldn't you come today to dine, anyway? My wife's
expecting you. Please, do come. And, above all, talk it over
with her. She's a wonderful woman. For God's sake, on my knees,
I implore you!"
"If you so much wish it, I will come," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, sighing.
And, anxious to change the conversation, he inquired about what
interested them both--the new head of Stepan Arkadyevitch's
department, a man not yet old, who had suddenly been promoted to
so high a position.
Alexey Alexandrovitch had previously felt no liking for Count
Anitchkin, and had always differed from him in his opinions. But
now, from a feeling readily comprehensible to officials--that
hatred felt by one who has suffered a defeat in the service for
one who has received a promotion, he could not endure him.
"Well, have you seen him?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch with a
malignant smile.
"Of course; he was at our sitting yesterday. He seems to know
his work capitally, and to be very energetic."
"Yes, but what is his energy directed to?" said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. "Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply
undoing what's been done? It's the great misfortune of our
government--this paper administration, of which he's a worthy
representative."
"Really, I don't know what fault one could find with him. His
policy I don't know, but one thing--he's a very nice fellow,"
answered Stepan Arkadyevitch. "I've just been seeing him, and
he's really a capital fellow. We lunched together, and I taught
him how to make, you know that drink, wine and oranges. It's so
cooling. And it's a wonder he didn't know it. He liked it
awfully. No, really he's a capital fellow."
Stepan Arkadyevitch glanced at his watch.
"Why, good heavens, it's four already, and I've still to go to
Dolgovushin's! So please come round to dinner. You can't
imagine how you will grieve my wife and me."
The way in which Alexey Alexandrovitch saw his brother-in-law out
was very different from the manner in which he had met him.
"I've promised, and I'll come," he answered wearily.
"Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won't regret it,"
answered Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling.
And, putting on his coat as he went, he patted the footman on the
head, chuckled, and went out.
"At five o'clock, and not evening dress, please," he shouted once
more, turning at the door.
Chapter 9
It was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before
the host himself got home. He went in together with Sergey
Ivanovitch Koznishev and Pestsov, who had reached the street door
at the same moment. These were the two leading representatives
of the Moscow intellectuals, as Oblonsky had called them. Both
were men respected for their character and their intelligence.
They respected each other, but were in complete and hopeless
disagreement upon almost every subject, not because they belonged
to opposite parties, but precisely because they were of the same
party (their enemies refused to see any distinction between their
views); but, in that party, each had his own special shade of
opinion. And since no difference is less easily overcome than
the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they
never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been
accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other's
incorrigible aberrations.
They were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when
Stepan Arkadyevitch overtook them. In the drawing room there
were already sitting Prince Alexander Dmitrievitch Shtcherbatsky,
young Shtcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Kitty, and Karenin.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw immediately that things were not going
well in the drawing-room without him. Darya Alexandrovna, in her
best gray silk gown, obviously worried about the children, who
were to have their dinner by themselves in the nursery, and by
her husband's absence, was not equal to the task of making the
party mix without him. All were sitting like so many priests'
wives on a visit (so the old prince expressed it), obviously
wondering why they were there, and pumping up remarks simply to
avoid being silent. Turovtsin--good, simple man--felt
unmistakably a fish out of water, and the smile with which his
thick lips greeted Stepan Arkadyevitch said, as plainly as words:
"Well, old boy, you have popped me down in a learned set! A
drinking party now, or the _Chateau des Fleurs_, would be more in
my line!" The old prince sat in silence, his bright little eyes
watching Karenin from one side, and Stepan Arkadyevitch saw that
he had already formed a phrase to sum up that politician of whom
guests were invited to partake as though he were a sturgeon.
Kitty was looking at the door, calling up all her energies to
keep her from blushing at the entrance of Konstantin Levin.
Young Shtcherbatsky, who had not been introduced to Karenin, was
trying to look as though he were not in the least conscious of
it. Karenin himself had followed the Petersburg fashion for a
dinner with ladies and was wearing evening dress and a white tie.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw by his face that he had come simply to
keep his promise, and was performing a disagreeable duty in being
present at this gathering. He was indeed the person chiefly
responsible for the chill benumbing all the guests before Stepan
Arkadyevitch came in.
On entering the drawing room Stepan Arkadyevitch apologized,
explaining that he had been detained by that prince, who was
always the scapegoat for all his absences and unpunctualities,
and in one moment he had made all the guests acquainted with each
other, and, bringing together Alexey Alexandrovitch and Sergey
Koznishev, started them on a discussion of the Russification of
Poland, into which they immediately plunged with Pestsov.
Slapping Turovtsin on the shoulder, he whispered something comic
in his ear, and set him down by his wife and the old prince.
Then he told Kitty she was looking very pretty that evening, and
presented Shtcherbatsky to Karenin. In a moment he had so
kneaded together the social dough that the drawing room became
very lively, and there was a merry buzz of voices. Konstantin
Levin was the only person who had not arrived. But this was so
much the better, as going into the dining room, Stepan
Arkadyevitch found to his horror that the port and sherry had
been procured from Depre, and not from Levy, and, directing that
the coachman should be sent off as speedily as possible to
Levy's, he was going back to the drawing room.
In the dining room he was met by Konstantin Levin.
"I'm not late?"
"You can never help being late!" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, taking
his arm.
"Have you a lot of people? Who's here?" asked Levin, unable to
help blushing, as he knocked the snow off his cap with his glove.
"All our own set. Kitty's here. Come along, I'll introduce you
to Karenin."
Stepan Arkadyevitch, for all his liberal views, was well aware
that to meet Karenin was sure to be felt a flattering
distinction, and so treated his best friends to this honor. But
at that instant Konstantin Levin was not in a condition to feel
all the gratification of making such an acquaintance. He had not
seen Kitty since that memorable evening when he met Vronsky, not
counting, that is, the moment when he had had a glimpse of her on
the highroad. He had known at the bottom of his heart that he
would see her here today. But to keep his thoughts free, he had
tried to persuade himself that he did not know it. Now when he
heard that she was here, he was suddenly conscious of such
delight, and at the same time of such dread, that his breath
failed him and he could not utter what he wanted to say.
"What is she like, what is she like? Like what she used to be,
or like what she was in the carriage? What if Darya Alexandrovna
told the truth? Why shouldn't it be the truth?" he thought.
"Oh, please, introduce me to Karenin," he brought out with an
effort, and with a desperately determined step he walked into the
drawing room and beheld her.
She was not the same as she used to be, nor was she as she had
been in the carriage; she was quite different.
She was scared, shy, shame-faced, and still more charming from
it. She saw him the very instant he walked into the room. She
had been expecting him. She was delighted, and so confused at
her own delight that there was a moment, the moment when he went
up to her sister and glanced again at her, when she, and he, and
Dolly, who saw it all, thought she would break down and would
begin to cry. She crimsoned, turned white, crimsoned again, and
grew faint, waiting with quivering lips for him to come to her.
He went up to her, bowed, and held out his hand without speaking.
Except for the slight quiver of her lips and the moisture in her
eyes that made them brighter, her smile was almost calm as she
said:
"How long it is since we've seen each other!" and with desperate
determination she pressed his hand with her cold hand.
"You've not seen me, but I've seen you," said Levin, with a
radiant smile of happiness. "I saw you when you were driving
from the railway station to Ergushovo."
"When?" she asked, wondering.
"You were driving to Ergushovo," said Levin, feeling as if he
would sob with the rapture that was flooding his heart. "And how
dared I associate a thought of anything not innocent with this
touching creature? And, yes, I do believe it's true what Darya
Alexandrovna told me," he thought.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took him by the arm and led him away to
Karenin.
"Let me introduce you." He mentioned their names.
"Very glad to meet you again," said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly,
shaking hands with Levin.
"You are acquainted?" Stepan Arkadyevitch asked in surprise.
"We spent three hours together in the train," said Levin smiling,
"but got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified--at least
I was."
"Nonsense! Come along, please," said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
pointing in the direction of the dining room.
The men went into the dining-room and went up to a table, laid
with six sorts of spirits and as many kinds of cheese, some with
little silver spades and some without, caviar, herrings,
preserves of various kinds, and plates with slices of French
bread.
The men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt
delicacies, and the discussion of the Russification of Poland
between Koznishev, Karenin, and Pestsov died down in anticipation
of dinner.
Sergey Ivanovitch was unequaled in his skill in winding up the
most heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of
Attic salt that changed the disposition of his opponent. He did
this now.
Alexey Alexandrovitch had been maintaining that the Russification
of Poland could only be accomplished as a result of larger
measures which ought to be introduced by the Russian government.
Pestsov insisted that one country can only absorb another when it
is the more densely populated.
Koznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they
were going out of the drawing room to conclude the argument,
Koznishev said, smiling:
"So, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there
is but one method--to bring up as many children as one can. My
brother and I are terribly in fault, I see. You married men,
especially you, Stepan Arkadyevitch, are the real patriots: what
number have you reached?" he said, smiling genially at their host
and holding out a tiny wine glass to him.
Everyone laughed, and Stepan Arkadyevitch with particular good
humor.
"Oh, yes, that's the best method!" he said, munching cheese and
filling the wine-glass with a special sort of spirit. The
conversation dropped at the jest.
"This cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?" said the master
of the house. "Why, have you been going in for gymnastics
again?" he asked Levin, pinching his muscle with his left hand.
Levin smiled, bent his arm, and under Stepan Arkadyevitch's
fingers the muscles swelled up like a sound cheese, hard as a
knob of iron, through the fine cloth of the coat.
"What biceps! A perfect Samson!"
"I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears," observed
Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had the mistiest notions about the
chase. He cut off and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine
as a spider-web.
Levin smiled.
"Not at all. Quite the contrary; a child can kill a bear," he
said, with a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were
approaching the table.
"You have killed a bear, I've been told!" said Kitty, trying
assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would
slip away, and setting the lace quivering over her white arm.
"Are there bears on your place?" she added, turning her charming
little head to him and smiling.
There was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but
what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in
every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There
was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness--
soft, timid tenderness--and promise and hope and love for him,
which he could not but believe in and which choked him with
happiness.
"No, we've been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back
from there that I met your _beaufrere_ in the train, or your
_beaufrere's_ brother-in-law," he said with a smile. "It was an
amusing meeting."
And he began telling with droll good-humor how, after not
sleeping all night, he had, wearing an old fur-lined,
full-skirted coat, got into Alexey Alexandrovitch's compartment.
"The conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out
on account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my
feelings in elevated language, and...you, too," he said,
addressing Karenin and forgetting his name, "at first would have
ejected me on the ground of the old coat, but afterwards you took
my part, for which I am extremely grateful."
"The rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too
ill-defined," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, rubbing the tips of his
fingers on his handkerchief.
"I saw you were in uncertainty about me," said Levin, smiling
good-naturedly, "but I made haste to plunge into intellectual
conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire."
Sergey Ivanovitch, while he kept up a conversation with their
hostess, had one ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at
him. "What is the matter with him today? Why such a conquering
hero?" he thought. He did not know that Levin was feeling as
though he had grown wings. Levin knew she was listening to his
words and that she was glad to listen to him. And this was the
only thing that interested him. Not in that room only, but in
the whole world, there existed for him only himself, with
enormously increased importance and dignity in his own eyes, and
she. He felt himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy, and far
away down below were all those nice excellent Karenins,
Oblonskys, and all the world.
Quite without attracting notice, without glancing at them, as
though there were no other places left, Stepan Arkadyevitch put
Levin and Kitty side by side.
"Oh, you may as well sit there," he said to Levin.
The dinner was as choice as the china, in which Stepan
Arkadyevitch was a connoisseur. The _soupe Marie-Louise_ was a
splendid success; the tiny pies eaten with it melted in the mouth
and were irreproachable. The two footmen and Matvey, in white
cravats, did their duty with the dishes and wines unobtrusively,
quietly, and swiftly. On the material side the dinner was a
success; it was no less so on the immaterial. The conversation,
at times general and at times between individuals, never paused,
and towards the end the company was so lively that the men rose
from the table, without stopping speaking, and even Alexey
Alexandrovitch thawed.
Chapter 10
Pestsov liked thrashing an argument out to the end, and was not
satisfied with Sergey Ivanovitch's words, especially as he felt
the injustice of his view.
"I did not mean," he said over the soup, addressing Alexey
Alexandrovitch, "mere density of population alone, but in
conjunction with fundamental ideas, and not by means of
principles."
"It seems to me," Alexey Alexandrovitch said languidly, and with
no haste, "that that's the same thing. In my opinion, influence
over another people is only possible to the people which has the
higher development, which..."
"But that's just the question," Pestsov broke in in his bass.
He was always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his
whole soul into what he was saying. "In what are we to make
higher development consist? The English, the French, the
Germans, which is at the highest stage of development? Which of
them will nationalize the other? We see the Rhine provinces have
been turned French, but the Germans are not at a lower stage!" he
shouted. "There is another law at work there."
"I fancy that the greater influence is always on the side of true
civilization," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, slightly lifting his
eyebrows.
"But what are we to lay down as the outward signs of true
civilization?" said Pestsov.
"I imagine such signs are generally very well known," said Alexey
Alexandrovitch.
"But are they fully known?" Sergey Ivanovitch put in with a
subtle smile. "It is the accepted view now that real culture
must be purely classical; but we see most intense disputes on
each side of the question, and there is no denying that the
opposite camp has strong points in its favor."
"You are for classics, Sergey Ivanovitch. Will you take red
wine?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"I am not expressing my own opinion of either form of culture,"
Sergey Ivanovitch said, holding out his glass with a smile of
condescension, as to a child. "I only say that both sides have
strong arguments to support them," he went on, addressing Alexey
Alexandrovitch. "My sympathies are classical from education, but
in this discussion I am personally unable to arrive at a
conclusion. I see no distinct grounds for classical studies
being given a preeminence over scientific studies."
"The natural sciences have just as great an educational value,"
put in Pestsov. "Take astronomy, take botany, or zoology with
its system of general principles."
"I cannot quite agree with that," responded Alexey Alexandrovitch
"It seems to me that one must admit that the very process of
studying the forms of language has a peculiarly favorable
influence on intellectual development. Moreover, it cannot be
denied that the influence of the classical authors is in the
highest degree moral, while, unfortunately, with the study of the
natural sciences are associated the false and noxious doctrines
which are the curse of our day."
Sergey Ivanovitch would have said something, but Pestsov
interrupted him in his rich bass. He began warmly contesting the
justice of this view. Sergey Ivanovitch waited serenely to
speak, obviously with a convincing reply ready.
"But," said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling subtly, and addressing
Karenin, "One must allow that to weigh all the advantages and
disadvantages of classical and scientific studies is a difficult
task, and the question which form of education was to be
preferred would not have been so quickly and conclusively decided
if there had not been in favor of classical education, as you
expressed it just now, its moral--disons le mot--anti-nihilist
influence."
"Undoubtedly."
"If it had not been for the distinctive property of
anti-nihilistic influence on the side of classical studies, we
should have considered the subject more, have weighed the
arguments on both sides," said Sergey Ivanovitch with a subtle
smile, "we should have given elbow-room to both tendencies. But
now we know that these little pills of classical learning possess
the medicinal property of anti-nihilism, and we boldly prescribe
them to our patients.... But what if they had no such medicinal
property?" he wound up humorously.
At Sergey Ivanovitch's little pills, everyone laughed; Turovtsin
in especial roared loudly and jovially, glad at last to have
found something to laugh at, all he ever looked for in listening
to conversation.
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not made a mistake in inviting Pestsov.
With Pestsov intellectual conversation never flagged for an
instant. Directly Sergey Ivanovitch had concluded the
conversation with his jest, Pestsov promptly started a new one.
"I can't agree even," said he, "that the government had that aim.
The government obviously is guided by abstract considerations,
and remains indifferent to the influence its measures may
exercise. The education of women, for instance, would naturally
be regarded as likely to be harmful, but the government opens
schools and universities for women."
And the conversation at once passed to the new subject of the
education of women.
Alexey Alexandrovitch expressed the idea that the education of
women is apt to be confounded with the emancipation of women, and
that it is only so that it can be considered dangerous.
"I consider, on the contrary, that the two questions are
inseparably connected together," said Pestsov; "it is a vicious
circle. Woman is deprived of rights from lack of education, and
the lack of education results from the absence of rights. We
must not forget that the subjection of women is so complete, and
dates from such ages back that we are often unwilling to
recognize the gulf that separates them from us," said he.
"You said rights," said Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till Pestsov
had finished, "meaning the right of sitting on juries, of voting,
of presiding at official meetings, the right of entering the
civil service, of sitting in parliament..."
"Undoubtedly."
"But if women, as a rare exception, can occupy such positions, it
seems to me you are wrong in using the expression 'rights.' It
would be more correct to say duties. Every man will agree that
in doing the duty of a juryman, a witness, a telegraph clerk, we
feel we are performing duties. And therefore it would be correct
to say that women are seeking duties, and quite legitimately.
And one can but sympathize with this desire to assist in the
general labor of man."
"Quite so," Alexey Alexandrovitch assented. "The question, I
imagine, is simply whether they are fitted for such duties."
"They will most likely be perfectly fitted," said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, "when education has become general among them. We
see this..."
"How about the proverb?" said the prince, who had a long while
been intent on the conversation, his little comical eyes
twinkling. "I can say it before my daughter: her hair is long,
because her wit is..."
"Just what they thought of the negroes before their
emancipation!" said Pestsov angrily.
"What seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh
duties," said Sergey Ivanovitch, "while we see, unhappily, that
men usually try to avoid them."
"Duties are bound up with rights--power, money, honor; those are
what women are seeking," said Pestsov.
"Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet-nurse and
feel injured because women are paid for the work, while no one
will take me," said the old prince.
Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter and Sergey
Ivanovitch regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled.
"Yes, but a man can't nurse a baby," said Pestsov, "while a
woman..."
"No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board
ship," said the old prince, feeling this freedom in conversation
permissible before his own daughters.
"There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women
officials," said Sergey Ivanovitch.
"Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?" put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch, thinking of Masha Tchibisova, whom he had had in
his mind all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting
him.
"If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would
find she had abandoned a family--her own or a sister's, where she
might have found a woman's duties," Darya Alexandrovna broke in
unexpectedly in a tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what
sort of girl Stepan Arkadyevitch was thinking of.
"But we take our stand on principle as the ideal," replied
Pestsov in his mellow bass. "Woman desires to have rights, to be
independent, educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the
consciousness of her disabilities."
"And I'm oppressed and humiliated that they won't engage me at
the Foundling," the old prince said again, to the huge delight of
Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick
end in the sauce.
Chapter 11
Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin.
At first, when they were talking of the influence that one people
has on another, there rose to Levin's mind what he had to say on
the subject. But these ideas, once of such importance in his
eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now
not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as
strange that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no
use to anyone. Kitty, too, should, one would have supposed, have
been interested in what they were saying of the rights and
education of women. How often she had mused on the subject,
thinking of her friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of
dependence, how often she had wondered about herself what would
become of her if she did not marry, and how often she had argued
with her sister about it! But it did not interest her at all.
She and Levin had a conversation of their own, yet not a
conversation, but some sort of mysterious communication, which
brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of
glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.
At first Levin, in answer to Kitty's question how he could have
seen her last year in the carriage, told her how he had been
coming home from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.
"It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only
just awake. Your mother was asleep in the corner. It was an
exquisite morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be
in a four-in-hand? It was a splendid set of four horses with
bells, and in a second you flashed by, and I saw you at the
window--you were sitting like this, holding the strings of your
cap in both hands, and thinking awfully deeply about something,"
he said, smiling. "How I should like to know what you were
thinking about then! Something important?"
"Wasn't I dreadfully untidy?" she wondered, but seeing the smile
of ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the
impression she had made had been very good. She blushed and
laughed with delight; "Really I don't remember."
"How nicely Turovtsin laughs!" said Levin, admiring his moist
eyes and shaking chest.
"Have you known him long?" asked Kitty.
"Oh, everyone knows him!"
"And I see you think he's a horrid man?"
"Not horrid, but nothing in him."
"Oh, you're wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!"
said Kitty. "I used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but
he, he's an awfully nice and wonderfully good-hearted man. He
has a heart of gold."
"How could you find out what sort of heart he has?"
"We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon
after...you came to see us," she said, with a guilty and at
the same time confiding smile, "all Dolly's children had scarlet
fever, and he happened to come and see her. And only fancy," she
said in a whisper, "he felt so sorry for her that he stayed and
began to help her look after the children. Yes, and for three
weeks he stopped with them, and looked after the children like a
nurse."
"I am telling Konstantin Dmitrievitch about Turovtsin in the
scarlet fever," she said, bending over to her sister.
"Yes, it was wonderful, noble!" said Dolly, glancing towards
Turovtsin, who had become aware they were talking of him, and
smiling gently to him. Levin glanced once more at Turovtsin, and
wondered how it was he had not realized all this man's goodness
before.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and I'll never think ill of people again!"
he said gaily, genuinely expressing what he felt at the moment.
Chapter 12
Connected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights
of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of
rights in marriage improper to discuss before the ladies.
Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon these
questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and Stepan Arkadyevitch
carefully drew him off them.
When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out,
Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey
Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of inequality.
The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that
the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband
are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion.
Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey Alexandrovitch
and offered him a cigar.
"No, I don't smoke," Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and
as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the
subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.
"I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature
of things," he said, and would have gone on to the drawing room.
But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into
the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.
"You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?" said Turovtsin, warmed
up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an
opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. "Vasya
Pryatchnikov," he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp,
red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important
guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, "they told me today he fought a
duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him."
Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place,
so Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by
ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch's sore spot.
He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey
Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity:
"What did Pryatchnikov fight about?"
"His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot
him!"
"Ah!" said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his
eyebrows, he went into the drawing room.
"How glad I am you have come," Dolly said with a frightened
smile, meeting him in the outer drawing room. "I must talk to
you. Let's sit here."
Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference,
given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya
Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.
"It's fortunate," said he, "especially as I was meaning to ask
you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start
tomorrow."
Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna's innocence, and
she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger
at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to
ruin her innocent friend.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch," she said, with desperate resolution
looking him in the face, "I asked you about Anna, you made me no
answer. How is she?"
"She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna," replied
Alexey Alexandrovitch, not looking at her.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right...but I
love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to
tell me what is wrong between you? what fault do you find with
her?"
Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes,
dropped his head.
"I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I
consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?"
he said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure
Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing room.
"I don't believe it, I don't believe it, I can't believe it!"
Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous
gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey
Alexandrovitch's sleeve. "We shall be disturbed here. Come this
way, please."
Dolly's agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got
up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat
down to a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by
penknives.
"I don't, I don't believe it!" Dolly said, trying to catch his
glance that avoided her.
"One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna," said he, with
an emphasis on the word "facts."
"But what has she done?" said Darya Alexandrovna. "What
precisely has she done?"
"She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That's
what she has done," said he.
"No, no, it can't be! No, for God's sake, you are mistaken,"
said Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her
eyes.
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning
to signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction;
but this warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened
his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.
"It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself
informs her husband of the fact--informs him that eight years of
her life, and a son, all that's a mistake, and that she wants to
begin life again," he said angrily, with a snort.
"Anna and sin--I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!"
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, now looking straight into Dolly's
kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being
loosened in spite of himself, "I would give a great deal for
doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but
it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now
there is no hope, and still I doubt of everything. I am in such
doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not
believe he is my son. I am very unhappy."
He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as
soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and
her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter.
"Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are
resolved on a divorce?"
"I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me
to do."
"Nothing else to do, nothing else to do..." she replied, with
tears in her eyes. "Oh no, don't say nothing else to do!" she
said.
"What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot,
as in any other--in loss, in death--bear one's trouble in peace,
but that one must act," said he, as though guessing her thought.
"One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is
placed; one can't live _a trois_."
"I understand, I quite understand that," said Dolly, and her head
sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her
own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive
movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an
imploring gesture. "But wait a little! You are a Christian.
Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?"
"I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great
deal," said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in
patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya
Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. "That
was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my
humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to
reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would
not regard the slightest request--that she should observe
decorum," he said, getting heated. "One may save anyone who does
not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so
depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what's to
be done?"
"Anything, only not divorce!" answered Darya Alexandrovna
"But what is anything?"
"No, it is awful! She will be no one's wife, she will be lost!"
"What can I do?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his
shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last
act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the
beginning of the conversation. "I am very grateful for your
sympathy, but I must be going," he said, getting up.
"No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I
will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband
deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up
everything, I would myself.... But I came to myself again; and
who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The
children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family,
and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on....
I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!"
Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on
him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a
divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and
said in a shrill, loud voice:--
"Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong.
I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all
in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have
never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I
cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the
wrong she has done me!" he said, with tones of hatred in his
voice.
"Love those that hate you...." Darya Alexandrovna whispered
timorously.
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long
ago, but it could not be applied to his case.
"Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is
impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has
enough to bear in his own grief!" And regaining his
self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch quietly took leave and
went away.
Chapter 13
When they rose from table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty
into the drawing room; but he was afraid she might dislike this,
as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little
ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without
looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and
the place where she was in the drawing room.
He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise
he had made her--always to think well of all men, and to like
everyone always. The conversation fell on the village commune,
in which Pestsov saw a sort of special principle, called by him
the choral principle. Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with
his brother, who had a special attitude of his own, both
admitting and not admitting the significance of the Russian
commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and
soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in
what he said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he
wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and contented.
He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was
at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving across
and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he
felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help
turning round. She was standing in the doorway with
Shtcherbatsky, looking at him.
"I thought you were going towards the piano," said he, going up
to her. "That's something I miss in the country--music."
"No; we only came to fetch you and thank you," she said,
rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, "for coming.
What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone,
you know."
"Yes; that's true," said Levin; "it generally happens that one
argues warmly simply because one can't make out what one's
opponent wants to prove."
Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most
intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous
expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants
finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been
struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the
beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they
liked different things, and would not define what they liked for
fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of
suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his opponent liked
and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself
agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless.
Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at
last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to
defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had
found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his
position. He tried to say this.
She knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he
began to illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.
"I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is
precious to him, then one can..."
She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed
idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition
from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his
brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of
the most complex ideas.
Shtcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a
card table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing
diverging circles over the new green cloth.
They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner--
the liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion
of Darya Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a
woman's duties in a family. He supported this view by the fact
that no family can get on without women to help; that in every
family, poor or rich, there are and must be nurses, either
relations or hired.
"No," said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more
boldly with her truthful eyes; "a girl may be so circumstanced
that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she
herself..."
At the hint he understood her.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes--you're right; you're right!"
And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the
liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of
an old maid's existence and its humiliation in Kitty's heart; and
loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave
up his arguments.
A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the
table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the
influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually
growing tension of happiness.
"Ah! I've scribbled all over the table!" she said, and, laying
down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.
"What! shall I be left alone--without her?" he thought with
horror, and he took the chalk. "Wait a minute," he said, sitting
down to the table. "I've long wanted to ask you one thing."
He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.
"Please, ask it."
"Here," he said; and he wrote the initial letters, _w, y, t, m, i,
c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t_. These letters meant, "When you told
me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?" There
seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated
sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her
understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then
leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or
twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, "Is it what
I think?"
"I understand," she said, flushing a little.
"What is this word?" he said, pointing to the n that stood for
_never_.
"It means _never_," she said; "but that's not true!"
He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk,
and stood up. She wrote, _t, i, c, n, a, d_.
Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her
conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of
the two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and
happy smile looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure
bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on
the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had
understood. It meant, "Then I could not answer differently."
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
"Only then?"
"Yes," her smile answered.
"And n...and now?" he asked.
"Well, read this. I'll tell you what I should like--should like
so much!" she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h.
This meant, "If you could forget and forgive what happened."
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and
breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase,
"I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to
love you."
She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.
"I understand," she said in a whisper.
He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and
without asking him, "Is it this?" took the chalk and at once
answered.
For a long while he could not understand what she had written,
and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness.
He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming
eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And
he wrote three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when
she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the
answer, "Yes."
"You're playing _secretaire_?" said the old prince. "But we must
really be getting along if you want to be in time at the
theater."
Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.
In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said
that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother
that he would come tomorrow morning.
Chapter 14
When Kitty had gone and Levin was left alone, he felt such
uneasiness without her, and such an impatient longing to get as
quickly, as quickly as possible, to tomorrow morning, when he
would see her again and be plighted to her forever, that he felt
afraid, as though of death, of those fourteen hours that he had
to get through without her. It was essential for him to be with
someone to talk to, so as not to be left alone, to kill time.
Stepan Arkadyevitch would have been the companion most congenial
to him, but he was going out, he said, to a _soiree_, in reality to
the ballet. Levin only had time to tell him he was happy, and
that he loved him, and would never, never forget what he had done
for him. The eyes and the smile of Stepan Arkadyevitch showed
Levin that he comprehended that feeling fittingly.
"Oh, so it's not time to die yet?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
pressing Levin's hand with emotion.
"N-n-no!" said Levin.
Darya Alexandrovna too, as she said good-bye to him, gave him a
sort of congratulation, saying, "How glad I am you have met
Kitty again! One must value old friends." Levin did not like
these words of Darya Alexandrovna's. She could not understand
how lofty and beyond her it all was, and she ought not to have
dared to allude to it. Levin said good-bye to them, but, not to
be left alone, he attached himself to his brother.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to a meeting."
"Well, I'll come with you. May I?"
"What for? Yes, come along," said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling.
"What is the matter with you today?"
"With me? Happiness is the matter with me!" said Levin, letting
down the window of the carriage they were driving in. "You don't
mind?--it's so stifling. It's happiness is the matter with me!
Why is it you have never married?"
Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.
"I am very glad, she seems a nice gi..." Sergey Ivanovitch was
beginning.
"Don't say it! don't say it!" shouted Levin, clutching at the
collar of his fur coat with both hands, and muffling him up in
it. "She's a nice girl" were such simple, humble words, so out
of harmony with his feeling.
Sergey Ivanovitch laughed outright a merry laugh, which was rare
with him. "Well, anyway, I may say that I'm very glad of it."
"That you may do tomorrow, tomorrow and nothing more! Nothing,
nothing, silence," said Levin, and muffling him once more in his
fur coat, he added: "I do like you so! Well, is it possible for
me to be present at the meeting?"
"Of course it is."
"What is your discussion about today?" asked Levin, never ceasing
smiling.
They arrived at the meeting. Levin heard the secretary
hesitatingly read the minutes which he obviously did not himself
understand; but Levin saw from this secretary's face what a good,
nice, kind-hearted person he was. This was evident from his
confusion and embarrassment in reading the minutes. Then the
discussion began. They were disputing about the misappropriation
of certain sums and the laying of certain pipes, and Sergey
Ivanovitch was very cutting to two members, and said something at
great length with an air of triumph; and another member,
scribbling something on a bit of paper, began timidly at first,
but afterwards answered him very viciously and delightfully. And
then Sviazhsky (he was there too) said something too, very
handsomely and nobly. Levin listened to them, and saw clearly
that these missing sums and these pipes were not anything real,
and that they were not at all angry, but were all the nicest,
kindest people, and everything was as happy and charming as
possible among them. They did no harm to anyone, and were all
enjoying it. What struck Levin was that he could see through
them all today, and from little, almost imperceptible signs knew
the soul of each, and saw distinctly that they were all good at
heart. And Levin himself in particular they were all extremely
fond of that day. That was evident from the way they spoke to
him, from the friendly, affectionate way even those he did not
know looked at him.
"Well, did you like it?" Sergey Ivanovitch asked him.
"Very much. I never supposed it was so interesting! Capital!
Splendid!"
Sviazhsky went up to Levin and invited him to come round to tea
with him. Levin was utterly at a loss to comprehend or recall
what it was he had disliked in Sviazhsky, what he had failed to
find in him. He was a clever and wonderfully good-hearted man.
"Most delighted," he said, and asked after his wife and
sister-in-law. And from a queer association of ideas, because in
his imagination the idea of Sviazhsky's sister-in-law was
connected with marriage, it occurred to him that there was no one
to whom he could more suitably speak of his happiness, and he was
very glad to go and see them.
Sviazhsky questioned him about his improvements on his estate,
presupposing, as he always did, that there was no possibility of
doing anything not done already in Europe, and now this did not
in the least annoy Levin. On the contrary, he felt that
Sviazhsky was right, that the whole business was of little value,
and he saw the wonderful softness and consideration with which
Sviazhsky avoided fully expressing his correct view. The ladies
of the Sviazhsky household were particularly delightful. It
seemed to Levin that they knew all about it already and
sympathized with him, saying nothing merely from delicacy. He
stayed with them one hour, two, three, talking of all sorts of
subjects but the one thing that filled his heart, and did not
observe that he was boring them dreadfully, and that it was long
past their bedtime.
Sviazhsky went with him into the hall, yawning and wondering at
the strange humor his friend was in. It was past one o'clock.
Levin went back to his hotel, and was dismayed at the thought
that all alone now with his impatience he had ten hours still
left to get through. The servant, whose turn it was to be up all
night, lighted his candles, and would have gone away, but Levin
stopped him. This servant, Yegor, whom Levin had noticed before,
struck him as a very intelligent, excellent, and, above all,
good-hearted man.
"Well, Yegor, it's hard work not sleeping, isn't it?"
"One's got to put up with it! It's part of our work, you see.
In a gentleman's house it's easier; but then here one makes
more."
It appeared that Yegor had a family, three boys and a daughter, a
sempstress, whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler's
shop.
Levin, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in
marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would
always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself. Yegor
listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Levin's idea,
but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Levin's
surprise, the observation that when he had lived with good
masters he had always been satisfied with his masters, and now
was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he was a
Frenchman.
"Wonderfully good-hearted fellow!" thought Levin.
"Well, but you yourself, Yegor, when you got married, did you
love your wife?"
"Ay! and why not?" responded Yegor.
And Levin saw that Yegor too was in an excited state and
intending to express all his most heartfelt emotions.
"My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up..." he
was beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin's
enthusiasm, just as people catch yawning.
But at that moment a ring was heard. Yegor departed, and Levin
was left alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had
refused tea and supper at Sviazhsky's, but he was incapable of
thinking of supper. He had not slept the previous night, but was
incapable of thinking of sleep either. His room was cold, but he
was oppressed by heat. He opened both the movable panes in his
window and sat down to the table opposite the open panes. Over
the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated cross with
chains, and above it the rising triangle of Charles's Wain with
the yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at
the stars, drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed evenly
into the room, and followed as though in a dream the images and
memories that rose in his imagination. At four o'clock he heard
steps in the passage and peeped out at the door. It was the
gambler Myaskin, whom he knew, coming from the club. He walked
gloomily, frowning and coughing. "Poor, unlucky fellow!" thought
Levin, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity for this
man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him,
but remembering that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed
his mind and sat down again at the open pane to bathe in the cold
air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross, silent, but
full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At
seven o'clock there was a noise of people polishing the floors,
and bells ringing in some servants' department, and Levin felt
that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed the pane, washed,
dressed, and went out into the street.
Chapter 15
The streets were still empty. Levin went to the house of the
Shtcherbatskys. The visitors' doors were closed and everything
was asleep. He walked back, went into his room again, and asked
for coffee. The day servant, not Yegor this time, brought it to
him. Levin would have entered into conversation with him, but a
bell rang for the servant, and he went out. Levin tried to drink
coffee and put some roll in his mouth, but his mouth was quite at
a loss what to do with the roll. Levin, rejecting the roll, put
on his coat and went out again for a walk. It was nine o'clock
when he reached the Shtcherbatskys' steps the second time. In
the house they were only just up, and the cook came out to go
marketing. He had to get through at least two hours more.
All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously,
and felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life.
He had eaten nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two
nights, had spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and
felt not simply fresher and stronger than ever, but felt utterly
independent of his body; he moved without muscular effort, and
felt as if he could do anything. He was convinced he could fly
upwards or lift the corner of the house, if need be. He spent
the remainder of the time in the street, incessantly looking at
his watch and gazing about him.
And what he saw then, he never saw again after. The children
especially going to school, the bluish doves flying down from
the roofs to the pavement, and the little loaves covered with
flour, thrust out by an unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves,
those doves, and those two boys were not earthly creatures. It
all happened at the same time: a boy ran towards a dove and
glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of her wings,
darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that
quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a
smell of fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out. All of
this together was so extraordinarily nice that Levin laughed and
cried with delight. Going a long way round by Gazetny Place and
Kislovka, he went back again to the hotel, and putting his watch
before him, he sat down to wait for twelve o'clock. In the next
room they were talking about some sort of machines, and
swindling, and coughing their morning coughs. They did not
realize that the hand was near twelve. The hand reached it.
Levin went out onto the steps. The sledge-drivers clearly knew
all about it. They crowded round Levin with happy faces,
quarreling among themselves, and offering their services. Trying
not to offend the other sledge drivers, and promising to drive
with them too, Levin took one and told him to drive to the
Shtcherbatskys'. The sledge-driver was splendid in a white
shirt-collar sticking out over his overcoat and into his strong,
full-blooded red neck. The sledge was high and comfortable, and
altogether such a one as Levin never drove in after, and the
horse was a good one, and tried to gallop but didn't seem to
move. The driver knew the Shtcherbatskys' house, and drew up at
the entrance with a curve of his arm and a "Wo!" especially
indicative of respect for his fare. The Shtcherbatskys'
hall-porter certainly knew all about it. This was evident from
the smile in his eyes and the way he said:
"Well, it's a long while since you've been to see us, Konstantin
Demitrievitch!"
Not only he knew all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted
and making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly
old eyes, Levin realized even something new in his happiness.
"Are they up?"
"Pray walk in! Leave it here," said he, smiling, as Levin would
have come back to take his hat. That meant something.
"To whom shall I announce your honor?" asked the footman.
The footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of
footmen, a dandy, was a very kind-hearted, good fellow, and he
too knew all about it.
"The princess...the prince...the young princess..." said Levin.
The first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked
across the room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He
had only just spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of
a skirt at the door, and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Levin's
eyes, and a joyful terror came over him at the nearness of his
happiness. Mademoiselle Linon was in great haste, and leaving
him, went out at the other door. Directly she had gone out,
swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss,
his life, himself--what was best in himself, what he had so long
sought and longed for--was quickly, so quickly approaching him.
She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to
him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by
the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were
shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love.
She stopped still close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and
dropped onto his shoulders.
She had done all she could--she had run up to him and given
herself up entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her
and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.
She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all
the morning.
Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy
in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to
be the first to tell him her happiness and his. She had got
ready to see him alone, and had been delighted at the idea, and
had been shy and ashamed, and did not know herself what she was
doing. She had heard his steps and voice, and had waited at the
door for Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle Linon had gone
away. Without thinking, without asking herself how and what, she
had gone up to him, and did as she was doing.
"Let us go to mamma!" she said, taking him by the hand. For a
long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was
afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as
that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he
felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand
and kissed it.
"Can it be true?" he said at last in a choked voice. "I can't
believe you love me, dear!"
She smiled at that "dear," and at the timidity with which he
glanced at her.
"Yes!" she said significantly, deliberately. "I am so happy!"
Not letting go his hands, she went into the drawing room. The
princess, seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to
cry and then immediately began to laugh, and with a vigorous step
Levin had not expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head,
kissed him, wetting his cheeks with her tears.
"So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad....
Kitty!"
"You've not been long settling things," said the old prince,
trying to seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet
when he turned to him.
"I've long, always wished for this!" said the prince, taking
Levin by the arm and drawing him towards himself. "Even when
this little feather-head fancied..."
"Papa!" shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands.
"Well, I won't!" he said. "I'm very, very ...plea ...Oh,
what a fool I am..."
He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and
made the sign of the cross over her.
And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man,
till then so little known to him, when he saw how slowly and
tenderly Kitty kissed his muscular hand.
Chapter 16
The princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince
sat down beside her. Kitty stood by her father's chair, still
holding his hand. All were silent.
The princess was the first to put everything into words, and to
translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions.
And all equally felt this strange and painful for the first
minute.
"When is it to be? We must have the benediction and
announcement. And when's the wedding to be? What do you think,
Alexander?"
"Here he is," said the old prince, pointing to Levin--"he's the
principal person in the matter."
"When?" said Levin blushing. "Tomorrow; If you ask me, I should
say, the benediction today and the wedding tomorrow."
"Come, _mon cher_, that's nonsense!"
"Well, in a week."
"He's quite mad."
"No, why so?"
"Well, upon my word!" said the mother, smiling, delighted at this
haste. "How about the trousseau?"
"Will there really be a trousseau and all that?" Levin thought
with horror. "But can the trousseau and the benediction and all
that--can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!" He
glanced at Kitty, and noticed that she was not in the least, not
in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the trousseau. "Then
it must be all right," he thought.
"Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like,"
he said apologetically.
"We'll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can
take place now. That's very well."
The princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have
gone away, but he kept her, embraced her, and, tenderly as a young
lover, kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were
obviously muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it
was they who were in love again or their daughter. When the
prince and the princess had gone, Levin went up to his betrothed
and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and could speak,
and he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he said not
at all what he had to say.
"How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my
heart I was always sure," he said. "I believe that it was
ordained."
"And I!" she said. "Even when...." She stopped and went on
again, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, "Even
when I thrust from me my happiness. I always loved you alone,
but I was carried away. I ought to tell you.... Can you forgive
that?"
"Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so
much. I ought to tell you..."
This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had
resolved from the first to tell her two things--that he was not
chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was
agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these
facts.
"No, not now, later!" he said.
"Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I'm not
afraid of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is
settled."
He added: "Settled that you'll take me whatever I may be--you
won't give me up? Yes?"
"Yes, yes."
Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who
with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her
favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with
their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began
that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge
till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state
of awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness
went on all the while increasing. He felt continually that a
great deal was being expected of him--what, he did not know; and
he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He
had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like
others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would
spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as
other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby
and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything
that had ever happened.
"Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat," said Mademoiselle Linon--
and Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.
"Well, I'm very glad," said Sviazhsky. "I advise you to get the
bouquets from Fomin's."
"Oh, are they wanted?" And he drove to Fomin's.
His brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many
expenses, presents to give....
"Oh, are presents wanted?" And he galloped to Foulde's.
And at the confectioner's, and at Fomin's, and at Foulde's he saw
that he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and
prided themselves on his happiness, just as every one whom he had
to do with during those days. What was extraordinary was that
everyone not only liked him, but even people previously
unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were enthusiastic over him,
gave way to him in everything, treated his feeling with
tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was
the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond
perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess
Nordston ventured to hint that she had hoped for something
better, Kitty was so angry and proved so conclusively that
nothing in the world could be better than Levin, that Countess
Nordston had to admit it, and in Kitty's presence never met Levin
without a smile of ecstatic admiration.
The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of
this time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction
gave Kitty his diary, in which there was written the confession
that tortured him. He had written this diary at the time with a
view to his future wife. Two things caused him anguish: his lack
of purity and his lack of faith. His confession of unbelief
passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the
truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her
in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his
soul she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul
should be called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account.
The other confession set her weeping bitterly.
Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He
knew that between him and her there could not be, and should not
be, secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he
had not realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not
put himself in her place. It was only when the same evening he
came to their house before the theater, went into her room and
saw her tear-stained, pitiful, sweet face, miserable with
suffering he had caused and nothing could undo, he felt the abyss
that separated his shameful past from her dovelike purity, and
was appalled at what he had done.
"Take them, take these dreadful books!" she said, pushing away
the notebooks lying before her on the table. "Why did you give
them me? No, it was better anyway," she added, touched by his
despairing face. "But it's awful, awful!"
His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.
"You can't forgive me," he whispered.
"Yes, I forgive you; but it's terrible!"
But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not
shatter it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him;
but from that time more than ever he considered himself unworthy
of her, morally bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized
more highly than ever his undeserved happiness.
Chapter 17
Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had
taken place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch
returned to his solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna's words about
forgiveness had aroused in him nothing but annoyance. The
applicability or non-applicability of the Christian precept to
his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed
lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey
Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what
stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured
Turovtsin--"_Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot
him!_" Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from
politeness they had not expressed it.
"But the matter is settled, it's useless thinking about it,"
Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but
the journey before him, and the revision work he had to do, he
went into his room and asked the porter who escorted him where
his man was. The porter said that the man had only just gone
out. Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be sent him, sat down
to the table, and taking the guidebook, began considering the
route of his journey.
"Two telegrams," said his manservant, coming into the room. "I
beg your pardon, your excellency; I'd only just that minute gone
out."
Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The
first telegram was the announcement of Stremov's appointment to
the very post Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung
the telegram down, and flushing a little, got up and began to
pace up and down the room. "_Quos vult perdere dementat_," he
said, meaning by _quos_ the persons responsible for this
appointment. He was not so much annoyed that he had not received
the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over; but it was
incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the
wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How
could they fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering
their _prestige_ by this appointment?
"Something else in the same line," he said to himself bitterly,
opening the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife.
Her name, written in blue pencil, "Anna," was the first thing
that caught his eye. "I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come.
I shall die easier with your forgiveness," he read. He smiled
contemptuously, and flung down the telegram. That this was a
trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for the first minute,
there could be no doubt.
"There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her
confinement. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be
their aim? To legitimize the child, to compromise me, and
prevent a divorce," he thought. "But something was said in it: I
am dying...." He read the telegram again, and suddenly the plain
meaning of what was said in it struck him.
"And if it is true?" he said to himself. "If it is true that in
the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely
penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would
not only be cruel, and everyone would blame me, but it would be
stupid on my part."
"Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg," he said to his
servant.
Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and
see his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing
and go away again. If she was really in danger, and wished to
see him before her death, he would forgive her if he found her
alive, and pay her the last duties if he came too late.
All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.
With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in
the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch
drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him,
not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about
it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive
away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the
difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen,
porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he
watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was
awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping
for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the
coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the
entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution
from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it
thoroughly. Its meaning ran: "If it's a trick, then calm
contempt and departure. If truth, do what is proper."
The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang.
The porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a
tie, and in slippers.
"How is your mistress?"
"A successful confinement yesterday."
Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt
distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.
"And how is she?"
Korney in his morning apron ran downstairs.
"Very ill," he answered. "There was a consultation yesterday,
and the doctor's here now."
"Take my things," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some
relief at the news that there was still hope of her death, he
went into the hall.
On the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexey
Alexandrovitch noticed it and asked:
"Who is here?"
"The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky."
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.
In the drawing room there was no one; at the sound of his steps
there came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac
ribbons.
She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity
given by the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him
towards the bedroom.
"Thank God you've come! She keeps on about you and nothing but
you," she said.
"Make haste with the ice!" the doctor's peremptory voice said
from the bedroom.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.
At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his
face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor's
voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey
Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that
he sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if
he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got
up and said:
"She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely
in your power, only let me be here...though I am at your
disposal. I..."
Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky's tears, felt a rush of
that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other
people's suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly
to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the
bedroom came the sound of Anna's voice saying something. Her
voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the
bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks
were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands
thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown were playing
with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were
not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind.
She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally
correct articulation and expressive intonation.
"For Alexey--I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a
strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn't it?)--Alexey
would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive.... But
why doesn't he come? He's so good he doesn't know himself how
good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick!
Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well
then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it's better in fact.
He'll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the
nurse."
"Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!" said the midwife,
trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.
"Oh, what nonsense!" Anna went on, not seeing her husband. "No,
give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You
say he won't forgive me, because you don't know him. No one
knows him. I'm the only one, and it was hard for me even. His
eyes I ought to know--Seryozha has just the same eyes--and I
can't bear to see them because of it. Has Seryozha had his
dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not forget.
Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be
asked to sleep with him."
All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as
though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised
her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.
"No, no!" she began. "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of
death. Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I've no
time, I've not long left to live; the fever will begin directly
and I shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I
understand it all, I see it all!"
Alexey Alexandrovitch's wrinkled face wore an expression of
agony; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he
could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on
struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at
her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at
him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had
never seen in them.
"Wait a minute, you don't know...stay a little, stay!..." She
stopped, as though collecting her ideas. "Yes," she began; "yes,
yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don't be surprised at
me. I'm still the same.... But there is another woman in me,
I'm afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you,
and could not forget about her that used to be. I'm not that
woman. Now I'm my real self, all myself. I'm dying now, I know
I shall die, ask him. Even now I feel--see here, the weights on
my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers--see how huge
they are! But this will soon all be over.... Only one thing I
want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I'm terrible, but my nurse
used to tell me; the holy martyr--what was her name? She was
worse. And I'll go to Rome; there's a wilderness, and there I
shall be no trouble to any one, only I'll take Seryozha and the
little one.... No, you can't forgive me! I know, it can't be
forgiven! No, no, go away, you're too good!" She held his hand
in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the other.
The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing,
and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle
with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous
agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that
gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did
not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life
trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his
enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his
enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in
the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the
sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around
his head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her
eyes.
"That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive
me!... They've come again; why don't they go away?... Oh, take
these cloaks off me!"
The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the
pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back
submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.
"Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and
I want nothing more.... Why doesn't _he_ come?" she said, turning
to the door towards Vronsky. "Do come, do come! Give him your
hand."
Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid
his face in his hands.
"Uncover your face--look at him! He's a saint," she said. "Oh!
uncover your face, do uncover it!" she said angrily. "Alexey
Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want to see him."
Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky's hands and drew them away
from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and
shame upon it.
"Give him your hand. Forgive him."
Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to
restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.
"Thank God, thank God!" she said, "now everything is ready. Only
to stretch my legs a little. There, that's capital. How badly
these flowers are done--not a bit like a violet," she said,
pointing to the hangings. "My God, my God! when will it end?
Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my
God, my God!"
And she tossed about on the bed.
The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was
ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The
whole day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness.
At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost
without pulse.
The end was expected every minute.
Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: "Better
stay, she might ask for you," and himself led him to his wife's
boudoir. Towards morning, there was a return again of
excitement, rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in
unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same thing, and the
doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went
into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door
sat down opposite him.
"Alexey Alexandrovitch," said Vronsky, feeling that a statement
of the position was coming, "I can't speak, I can't understand.
Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more
terrible for me."
He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the
hand and said:
"I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my
feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so
that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had
resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings.
I won't conceal from you that in beginning this I was in
uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued
by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the
telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I
longed for her death. But...." He paused, pondering whether to
disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. "But I saw her
and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed
to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other
cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God
only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!"
Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them
impressed Vronsky.
"This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the
laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will
never utter a word of reproach to you," Alexey Alexandrovitch
went on. "My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with
her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you
know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away."
He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting
up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him
from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey
Alexandrovitch's feeling, but he felt that it was something
higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life.
Chapter 18
After the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Vronsky went
out onto the steps of the Karenins' house and stood still, with
difficulty remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk
or drive. He felt disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of
all possibility of washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust
out of the beaten track along which he had so proudly and lightly
walked till then. All the habits and rules of his life that had
seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly false and inapplicable.
The betrayed husband, who had figured till that time as a
pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous obstacle
to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her herself,
elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that
husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not
ludicrous, but kind and straightforward and large. Vronsky could
not but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Vronsky
felt his elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own
falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his
sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this
sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly
despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt
unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had
seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he
had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had
seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul,
and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And
now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be
loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her
forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful
memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful
position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away
from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins'
house like one distraught, and did not know what to do.
"A sledge, sir?" asked the porter.
"Yes, a sledge."
On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without
undressing, lay down flat on the sofa, clasping his hands and
laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories,
and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with
extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine
he had poured out for the patient and spilt over the spoon, then
the midwife's white hands, then the queer posture of Alexey
Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed.
"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene
confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he
will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did
begin to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness.
The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over
his head, when all at once--it was as though a violent shock of
electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up
on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a
panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had
never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness
in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.
"You may trample me in the mud," he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch's
words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with
its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and
tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his
own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey
Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched
out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same
position and shut his eyes.
"To sleep! To forget!" he repeated to himself. But with his
eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had
been on the memorable evening before the races.
"That is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her
memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled?
how can we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began
to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of
fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his
brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for
long. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments
rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. "Take
away his hands," Anna's voice says. He takes away his hands and
feels the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his face.
He still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not
the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some
chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of
fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper
words repeated: "I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of
it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it."
"What's this? Am I going out of my mind?" he said to himself.
"Perhaps. What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men
shoot themselves?" he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he
saw with wonder an embroidered cushion beside him, worked by
Varya, his brother's wife. He touched the tassel of the cushion,
and tried to think of Varya, of when he had seen her last. But
to think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort. "No, I
must sleep!" He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into
it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He
jumped up and sat down. "That's all over for me," he said to
himself. "I must think what to do. What is left?" His mind
rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of Anna.
"Ambition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?" He could not
come to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but
now there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took
off his coat, undid his belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to
breathe more freely, walked up and down the room. "This is how
people go mad," he repeated, "and how they shoot themselves...to
escape humiliation," he added slowly.
He went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and
clenched teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked
round him, turned it to a loaded barrel, and sank into thought.
For two minutes, his head bent forward with an expression of an
intense effort of thought, he stood with the revolver in his
hand, motionless, thinking.
"Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous,
and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable
conclusion. In reality this "of course," that seemed convincing
to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of
memories and images through which he had passed ten times already
during the last hour--memories of happiness lost forever. There
was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to
come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the
sequence of these images and emotions was the same.
"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his thought
passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and
images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest,
and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were,
squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear
the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him
reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped
the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking
about him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room,
looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the
wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking
steps of his servant coming through the drawing room brought him
to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that
he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and
on his arm, he knew he had shot himself.
"Idiotic! Missed!" he said, fumbling after the revolver. The
revolver was close beside him--he sought further off. Still
feeling for it, he stretched out to the other side, and not being
strong enough to keep his balance, fell over, streaming with
blood.
The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually
complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves,
was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor,
that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An
hour later Varya, his brother's wife, had arrived, and with the
assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all
directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the
wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.
Chapter 19
The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing
for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her
repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she
might not die--this mistake was two months after his return from
Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the
mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having
overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until
that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known
his own heart. At his sick wife's bedside he had for the first
time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic
suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and
hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And
pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most
of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not
simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual
peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the
very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the
source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while
he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple
when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her
remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after
reports reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for
his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken
too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he
felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of
tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had
been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his
child, and who was cast on one side during her mother's illness,
and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her,
and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He
would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for
a long while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of
him, got quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour
at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red,
downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements
of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched
fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments
particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace
and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his
position, nothing that ought to be changed.
But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however
natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be
allowed to remain in it.